Facebook Lessons Learnedby Jim
23 Jul 2012
6:07 pm0
Yesterday, I got a friend request from my wife. It seemed strange, so I looked a little further into it. Turns out the account was fake and had been composed of all the publicly available information from her account. This included over 400 people who are her friends. We’ve reported the account and have been doing our best to fix the damage, but it got me thinking about how easy it is for someone to masquerade as someone you trust. Here are two things you can do that will help prevent this from happening to you or your friends:
- Don’t automatically accept ANY friend requests (especially suspicious ones) without doing a little research. 60 seconds looking at the timeline showed that the fraudulent account was only a few hours old and only had one photo (the public profile picture), clear indications this account was fake. If you find a fake account (like the one I did), please report it immediately to both Facebook and your real friend who is being impersonated. Otherwise, they may never know someone is spoofing them. If you do end up friending a scammer like this, they could collect all your shared Facebook information and create a duplicate of your account and try to scam all your friends with much more convincing data.
- Don’t make your friend list public. Think about it, by default Facebook lets you tell the world, “Here are 400 people that trust me”. That is very valuable information to an imposter. Facebook lets you hide your friend list from strangers, so an imposter can’t see who trusts you. It still shows mutual friends, so your real friends can still find you, but only if they already know people you know.
Please help make Facebook a safer place by following these two tips. Do it to protect yourself and do it to protect your friends. Please help educate your friends on Facebook so we can stop criminals from abusing the system.
Here are some images to show how to do these things:
This is how to report a violation from someone's timeline.
To hide your friends from the public:
From your own profile, click on your friend list.
At the top, click "Edit" and then choose to only show your friends to your friends.
Here is an official and very helpful link that talks about reporting violations:
https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=207209825981040&ref_query=fake+account#violations
Transit of Venusby Jim
5 Jun 2012
6:06 pm0
Here are some pictures of my pinhole mirror contraption. Using my tripod, I reflected the sun into my kitchen.
The balancing actby Jim
6 May 2012
7:05 pm0
Angie has been home a few days now and her mom, Pam, flew in yesterday to help out. Not long after arriving home on Friday I went to the pharmacy to pick up all the prescriptions for the next few weeks. I felt like we could open up our own little pharmacy with all the bottles I brought home.
So now the game is a balancing act to keep the pain under control without taking too many drugs. It is a difficult moving target to hit all the time, but we’re doing our best. Thank you all for your love and support, it really does mean a lot to us.
The papers are being processedby Jim
4 May 2012
2:05 pm2
They are working on the discharge papers. We’ll be going soon!
Angie’s IVsby Jim
4 May 2012
12:05 pm1
Angie’s IV in her arm had to come out, but her two IVs in her feet are (surprisingly) still good. She thought it was a little funny that she woke up with one in each foot. She asked me to take a picture, so here it is.
Another device checkby Jim
4 May 2012
11:05 am0
Allysonne is here doing another pacer check with Angie. We don’t get a turtle or blue bird now that we’re on the “adult” side, but that’s okay. I showed Allysonne the picture I took yesterday and she loved it. The device check is unfortunately rather uncomfortable. They look at the history stored on the device, but then they also test some thresholds. This is the uncomfortable part. The only way to test the limits is to literally stop her heart. They test the rate and the capture voltage by lower it until it stops. It usually makes Angie a little queasy, but it is a necessity. It was during a pacemaker interrogation on Monday that they discovered that she needed a new lead and this whole surgery happened.
The latest news is that we’ll go home today. So far no one has said that we won’t, but they always use the word, “might”. I imagine they are quite cautious in what they say, so if they are saying, “you might go home today,” they really mean, “you will probably go home today.” How awful it would be to hear, “you might go home” all day and then say, “well, you’re not ready, so you’re staying here.” I’m sure they avoid doing that. Anyway, thanks for all your prayers and support! Hopefully my next post will be from home!
Back to the “adult” sideby Jim
3 May 2012
4:05 pm2
Angie has been moved to the adult side of the hospital. We’re in or room and I’ve been spoon feeding Angie her turkey sandwich. They don’t have any forks and the sandwich is too big for her to hold.
Angie’s migraine started to come back right before we left the ICU, but it seems to be under control again. She’s walked a bit and is doing much better now that there is solid food in her stomach.