I delete the request and block the person so they can no longer see anything about me at all (including my profile photo which is always public for everyone).
I recommend everyone see the movie “Catfish” which was about a man who met a woman online and was catfished, meaning she was not quite what she made herself out to be.
I get friend requests from men all the time and the men are usually good looking, and when I click on their profile to see if we may have mutual friends or to figure out why this man is friending me, I will usually find their profile status to say “single” or “widowed.” I never accept it, and I block them all.
I taught my daughter about how she should never reveal anything online to a stranger. Never talk about where she lives or her age or anything at all. I told her someone may present themselves as a teenage girl, and in reality it might be someone from India or Africa or it might be an old man who’s just a pervert and wants to talk to young girls.
One time about three years ago, I did not heed my own advice and I accepted the friendship of someone in the military who had two mutual friends. The mutual friends, who I know in real life, are good people, so I figured if they’re both friends with him, then he’s ok. Right away he started pm’ing me, not asking too many personal questions, not looking for personal information, just chatty. He was nice looking, highly decorated uniform. I googled him (he had his own Wikipedia page) and he was someone high up in the US military, leading the command in Afghanistan. He was about 60, in great shape (there were many photos of him on the internet), went to West Point, his father went to West Point, and he was married. On the FB chat, I told him that I saw he was married. He said no, that was not accurate. I told him that the internet is saying you’re married. I was at work at the time and I was leaving for the day. This whole thing struck me as odd, and it was dawning on me that it was a scam, despite the two mutual friends. I went home and googled his name and put the word “scam” in the search bar with his name and it came up as one that is very often used in scam profiles. I immediately deleted and blocked him. I told the two people that are mutual friends so they could block him, as well.
Other than that, there was a Jelly who some were also friends with on FB, who it turned out was not who he said he was. That was kind of sad because he didn’t seem like he was out to scam anyone, just was a lonely person who, once he started with the fake persona, couldn’t come out and then say it was all made up. He ended up dying, and even though his profile was fake, a lot of people were saddened because he didn’t have bad intentions.
