Don't you think it might be prudent to redact names too? There's no proof so far that those named have anything to do with any of this and you just popped your names up willy nilly without confirming any of this.

@henwy:

your = their

How come this isn't a story about how 1) your Facebook account can get hacked, or 2) you may not want to friend people you don't know (even if she's cute) if you have personal information on your Facebook account?

I am convinced of a few things, after reading this article. A: facebook = lower intelligence. Its kinda like enabling ebonics for the majority (rather than the minority talking jive) B: best thing I ever did was get rid of my facebook/myspace accounts, because something about this whole ploy is amazingly illegal and/or illicit.

and C: well, I dunno. It's fun to play games on the intertubes, but it's more fun to keep yourself safe.

Well, I guess #2 is kind of mentioned at the end. But the tone of the article assumes everything you've been told about Jenny is true.

I doubted this person is a anything supervisor after all the obvious spelling mistakes, such as "coarse" instead of "course".

As for this being a skip trace thing, WOW. How much information do you people put online? I guess I am lucky that I have dual online ID's, and there is really no easy way for someone to track my online identity to my true one. I also don't friend every person who friends me on any service, especially if I don't know them.

Who just randomly says yes to everyone who friends them on facebook? Hell I dont even say yes to half the people I DO know who friend me like the assholes in college and high school who now want to be your "friend".

(yes yes the irony of this post is not lost on me)

If you add people as friends you do not know you are an idiot, if you add people you barely know, you are an idiot.

My sympathy does not apply to people this dumb.

But if you don't fear skip tracers, keep befriending random cute chicks.

It's easy to set up various friend lists on Facebook. For example, I have lists for family and people I work with. Only those two groups have permissions to view my personal and contact information. People I went to school with 20 years ago can send me a message if they want to contact me, I don't need everyone getting my e-mail and phone numbers.

Lots of people will befriend strangers just to watch their 'friends' number go up. Curious, though, as to who hacked Emily's fake Facebook page. That's a great story in itself.

@mangelo: Okay, okay! I'll get off your damn lawn.

@Jim Topoleski: I got into an argument with someone about this once. Woman gets a friend request from some dude who bullied her in high school (w/o going into details it was really bad) and wants to know if she should friend him.

I'm like, "How is this even a question, of course you don't!" But this other guy says that she should because maybe he wants to apologize and it's not like he can hurt her through Facebook. Completely ridiculous.

@mangelo:

You don't make any sense. How could facebook be for 'lower intelligence' because of this article?. I know you had 4 friends, 1 of which was your mom, when you had an account... but really don't be bitter about it. I don't know how a social networking site could possibly be for stupid people, you don't have to act like an idiot just because it's FB. I know a lot of people do, but your post just seems completely unwarranted and random.

I find Facebook to be a good way to keep up with friends I lost touch with after college. If I emailed pictures of my kids to everyone on my friend list individually, it would take hours.

What about that is 'lower intelligence?' You're painting with far too broad a brush.

@quail: I bet it's either

A. Someone she tracked/traced, or
B. A co-worker who was pissed that Emily was pulling in such good numbers, and Emily was stupid enough to enable stored passwords on her browser, and this idiot shoulder surfed her password, and waited for a day for Emily to be off, and pulled this.

Wow shes hot, I wonder if she wants to be friends with me...

@Rectilinear Propagation: I got into the same argument once myself. I am usually the one who rolls over and lets bygones be bygones, but in all honesty if they are going to apologize for treating me like shit in school, they are going to have to do it to my face personally, and not on some website.

Needless to say no one on my friends list ever treated me like dirt.

How could facebook be for 'lower intelligence' because of this article?

@Christie Porter: That's a reference to Jenny's grammar (or lack thereof).

@outoftheblew: I have to agree with you here. She clearly changed her act half way through the "interview," who's to say that she/he is still lying.

Isn't this a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act?

I suspect this is in Canada, so the FDCPA doesn't apply there.

I don't accept facebook friends unless they're friends with someone I'm already friends with or I know them offline.

I've rejected a few that way.

It's not foolproof and there are a few people I don't know well on my friends list, but at least I know why they added me.

Two things:

1 - This definitely violates Facebook's TOS. Providing false information. Doing "misleading" things. Probably some other things, too.

2 - I'm not sure about Canada, but this sounds like it might violate some debt collection laws. Can anyone confirm this?

Sometimes I'm looking at my friends' profiles and I'm stunned at how much information they put online. Phone numbers, addresses, and really personal information about themselves...I don't mean favorite music or movies, but really personal information like where they go every day, their routines...why people don't seem to understand this is a problem is beyond me.

Could be an ex-boyfriend (ex-girlfriend?) as well.

What? Next you're going to tell me the cute chick offering "free web cam" shows is just a shill for a porn site.

@ pecan 3.14159265 (reply not working)

Agreed. People are sharing way too much on these sites.

@TakingItSeriously: I think what gets me is also that it seems that if you only make friends with people you actually know, they should know enough about you to not have to guess where you live. If they know you, they probably have your phone number, or can message you to ask. If they need to send you mail, they can ask. I don't understand why people take on such a risk when they put their personal information on Facebook.

@outoftheblew:
Because
1) It's unlikely your Facebook with be "hacked." and

2) That's pretty much a no-brainer. You only want to add people you're friends with on any social networking site. Skiptracers and anyone that may be out for your contact info simply needs to add you as a friend. Not only that, but there are Facebook apps that people will add for their cuteness, but they're actually designed to harvest contact info from your page and your friends' pages.

@Jim Topoleski: I'm with you. Clicking a few buttons on a social networking site isn't going to make up for asshattery in the past.
I recently got a request from one such classmate who now listed her religion as "karma". Right. Hope that's working out well for her, considering what a shebeast she was in high school.

@pecan 3.14159265

Another thing that concerns me are those third party Facebook applications. Who knows what those applications designers who have access to your information are using it for.

@Christie Porter:

Not that I agree with mangelo, but a study shows that college students with facebooks tend to get .5 to 1.0 GPA below those without, so while he may just be trolling there was a bit of truth to it.

[www.time.com]

Not sure if it applies here, but a lady was prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 1830 for violating MySpace's TOS and setting up a fake profile to harass someone...and I'm fairly certain these tactics wouldn't adhere to the FDCPA. It's definitely worth checking into if you were contacted by "Emily" or "Jenny" or any other social networking skiptracer, as each violation of the FDCPA enables the consumer to receive up to $1,000 in statutory damages, in addition to actual damages and attorney's fees.

And no, I'm not an attorney, just a daily consumerist follower.

i thought facebook was the anti-myspace, where you just randomly pick up friends for no reason... that'll teach you to be so nice to "pretty" girls!

@LabCoatWanting_GitEmSteveDave: To me it sounds like someone who got drunk and decided it would be fun to tell all of those people how they'd been scammed. This last bit was fiction she attempted to use to cover for it.

@Christie Porter: Just because you log in from Facebook doesn't mean it's your job to support it and insult the people who don't like to use it. "lol get a life" is rarely a good comeback, no matter what the original comment.

As to whether Facebook supports a lower intelligence curve - probably, as its main demographic is teenagers. A lot of older folks are starting to join,though and if you use it solely to have some fun and talk to people you don't see anymore, it's not so harmful.

Just, yeah, don't accept random friend-vites from hot chicks. Even if you aren't in collections.

@LabCoatWanting_GitEmSteveDave: Unfortunately, supervisors can often be more dimwitted than people who work under them. I've worked the office rounds a few times in my short life, and the mass emails the bosses put out are... headache-inducing to say the least.

I will say Not-Emily is worse, though. /shudder.

@pecan 3.14159265: With FB's privacy settings, it IS possible that you're on a list allowed to see those details, while random schmoes aren't, but I guess that depends on how much faith you put in some of your FB friends.

@pecan 3.14159265:

I don't think it's a problem because 1) my profile is set to private, and 2) many of the people whom I've added (I'd say about 95%) would have ready access to that information whether or not I posted it there. I'm choosy about ho I accept as a facebook friend, but once I do, I consider them just that and don't see the point in hiding much.

600 people falling for a honey trap. Luckily for these geniuses this "babe" was only looking to collect unpaid bills from them.

Sorry to wade in with the depressing comment, but the world is a nasty place. Anyone who goes through the trouble to unilaterally establish contact with you is looking to get (or take) something FROM YOU. Be it a warm feeling of satisfaction, or all the money in your bank account, they want something. You come second.

@TakingItSeriously:

True in many cases, but you're generalizing. If you're careful about who you add and who you share with, it can be a good tool.

So, don't friend people on Facebook unless they message you first explaining who they are? Got it. (Rocket science, folks, rocket science)

This seems like yet another reason not to have a Facebook account.

@LabCoatWanting_GitEmSteveDave: I really hope that this was a hacked account, because it makes me angry at society if someone can get to a supervision-level job while being barely literate and unable to clearly communicate via text.

@Christie Porter: Maybe because I was able to use it to backtrack a bunch of kids our teenager had been running with and getting in trouble with. I found enough information between facebook, myspace and one of the other social networking sites to get full names, phone numbers, locations, who knew who.

I went from having a couple of first names to piecing together the whole sordid mess in about two weeks. With what I found out I could probably land about 20 people in jail right now.

Beware of what your putting online, your stupid if you just put everything out there and let anyone see it.

This may make me sound cold, but I think if you have a collection agency after you, you have more urgent concerns than whether that cute girl you met on Facebook is who she seems. I normally assume hot chicks I don't know are spambots.

Stuff like this is why I don't use my real name online.

@Jim Topoleski: I had the same experience with facebook. Every single awful person from high school suddenly friended me like they totally don't remember how horrible they were to me. It happens in real life when I visit my hometown, too. It's just like "Honestly? You don't remember how much you hated me?"

@quail: Some people are really obsessed with numbers and stats like that and will do anything to see them go up.

From the looks of that conversation I wouldn't be surprised if it actually was this Emily person hastily trying to cover her tracks with a "hack" story. I also wouldn't be surprised if she was legitimately hacked.