Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Unfriending on Facebook

I was checking my privacy settings on Facebook this morning and discovered to my dismay that a very long-time personal friend was blocked. I couldn't remember why she was in my block list. Our families have been friends for two generations and we always got along. I just unblocked her, but now I'm wondering why nothing was ever said about it by anyone else when it happened. But I digress.

I accepted the friendship of a few new people. I never met them before and they weren't mutual friends with anyone else I knew on Facebook, and disturbing of all was how attractive they are. It continued to bother me. I assumed they saw something I posted at an AP article, or some other major news post on Facebook, but that I wasn't absolutely certain.

I looked at their profiles and found no mutual friends, and not really anything else either. The major dilemma I have is that once someone brand new on your list of friends gets through your privacy by becoming a friend, they then can see your family and friends, unless you further restrict your privacy settings, rendering yourself almost invisible to even your closest friends.

Facebook should have a multi-tiered friend privacy setting where if you meet someone brand new, you can keep them quarantined for a while by tagging them as an "acquaintance" or if they are friends you want to keep for reasons you don't want to share with family, you might have them in a seprate "network" you can pop in and out of without leaving Facebook.

Unfortunately for now I had to unfriend some people who might have been perfectly fine, or were planning on infiltrating my family to steal identities. I have no clue.