Holly Would

Be Careful On Social Media

My friend Abi received a message on Facebook last week from a boy that she didn’t know.
The message said: “Hi, this might seem a bit random. But I was speaking to a girl online for a few months and it turns out that it was an imposter pretending to be somebody else. They have a whole profile set up but they were using your photographs.”
So a random stranger, or possibly somebody that she knew, had set up a Facebook page under a false name and was using Abi’s photographs to talk to boys. This type of thing might sound unlikely or like a plot taken straight from an episode of the MTV series ‘Catfish’, but it is actually quite common.
For those of you that don’t know what a Catfish is, it is ‘to lure (someone) into a relationship by adopting a fictional online persona’ which is exactly what this person was trying to do with Abi’s photographs. It’s such a weird thing to have happen to you and understandably Abi has been completely shaken up by the whole situation.

Luckily nothing bad came of this strange incident and the fake profile has since been deleted but Abi said: “I’m still a bit uneasy about the fact somebody was watching me. They took my photographs and went through all that effort to make a profile; I just can’t understand it to be honest.”
What’s more disturbing about this is that this person also sent explicit photographs, that weren’t of Abi, to the boy claiming that they were of her. She added: “It is just all so weird and seedy. If somebody wants to send and receive photos like that then can they please do so without using my face.”
Similarly, within the last week, my friend Leah had her photographs taken by an imposter in order to Catfish people through an Instagram account. Alarmingly, this imposter was giving out personal information to men about where Leah worked and lived which led to her receiving many messages from strange people.
From 4pm to 1am last Sunday, Leah had received over 100 messages from strangers claiming that they had been speaking to her on Instagram. On this occasion the Catfish clearly knew quite a lot about Leah so they either knew her personally or they were at least friends with her on Facebook in order to access her information.
Leah contacted the police and the account was soon removed but she is continuing to receive some strange messages. Catfishing is clearly the work of disturbed individuals but it’s quite scary to think that there might be enough information about you online for this type of thing to happen.
I’m always quite careful with making sure that anybody who sends me a friend request, I have met personally and I always keep my privacy settings high. But I think that this is something that more people should be doing in order to protect their identities.
Social media is such an incredible tool for contacting people but when it’s left to the wrong hands it can be very scary indeed.