Stalking assistance required!
 

A very odd request!

Is there anyone on here who isn't friends with me on facebook who would mind looking one of my colleagues up on facebook? She wants to know how easily findable she is, but even my ninja facebook account with no friends (every stalker needs one of those!) has a search history linking to me, so finds her easily.

Weirdest thread I've ever posted, but would really appreciate some assistance!

Many thanks,

Jenna

i could for you :) lol

suppose its even better i'm not in the same coutry as you lol make the search harder

Thanks! Will PM you the details :)

no problems actually makes me curious about people finding myself

Yep. I managed to find my psych's and my cpn's facebook accounts, so if anyone can find them, then they can find me.

Because that's not creepy at all...

It would be even worse if I tried to friend them, which I havent done, because it's simply inappropriate. Besides they have their posts and stuff set as friends only, so I didnt find out much. Besides I havent done it lately, so we are talking in the past.

a lot of my old teachers fb pages are there too lol i was being curious one day but seriously i could see photos and things.

what gets me is people hu have kids and always putting them up and even have a public profile with pics of them up i think that i would be quite scared of it

Thanks Auror, it makes me feel much better.

And sherbet lemon, I agree with you about kids. There are some nasty people out there.

Thanks Carmen, that's kind of you to offer! Sherbet Lemon answered my question (said colleague does come up on searches), but thanks for offering :)

Speaking of public information, I worry about the youths I teach. In a non-creepy way, I've looked a few of them up on facebook and some of them have such public profiles (and most of my students aren't 13 yet, so shouldn't even be on facebook). I looked them up because I wanted to know if there were grounds to do some work on facebook privacy settings with them, but then realised I was too anxious to ask heads of houses/the headteacher if we can have an assembly on it.

I really recommend, if you can, go for it as a tutor (you have a form group right?) or with head of year. I have posts from when I was a we eyouth that're set to public that are so horribly cringe-worthy, and potentially dangerous to future careers, but they're so far back in my timeline, it'd take months to find and delete them all because of Facebook's weird deleting thing.

And certain... rule breaking at school was discovered because of posts I'd been tagged in by friends. And cyberbullying etc

I showed my tutor group a really good video about it, but my tutor group think they're so incredibly cool that they didn't engage with it at all. You know when thirteen year olds think they're all grown up, but actually they're embarrassingly immature? That's them! *rolls eyes*

One of my teachers from secondary school contacted me on fb not long ago.

It was weird because I had been thinking about writing to them because they helped me so much in secondary school when I was being really badly bullied. They also helped me pass GCSE science which I was really bad at.

So it was a nice surprise however it did concern me how easily I could be found, although only my profile photo/cover photo are set to public.

^that's nice that your teacher got in contact :)

As a pro privacy tip, I use a different name when I teach, which means I haven't had to do that teacher thing of changing my name on facebook! One of the youths in my tutor group claims that her friend from a different school found my facebook, but I find it unlikely that someone I don't even know would take the time to try to find me, or that they'd be able to (or at least I hope not!)

I could if you want

How do you use a different name when you teach? I mean do you just make it up?

I have a different surname on facebook so that clients cannot find me. Ironically a letter was once sent to a client using my facebook name because the clinican who sent it thought it was my actually surname!

I've changed my surname but I think I'm still findable.

One of the things that I think is that so many mental health professionals change there names on fb etc because of the risk of being found out that it must be fairly common to look up care workers online. I have to say that I have searched google for my care team and with most of the info it was boring or papers published by them etc but one of them a fb account came up I found it really odd!

^ I find it normal to search Google - I do that so of course it's normal ;)

But, I guess, I don't find that odd because it's looking them up in a professional capacity, whereas facebook is personal? The people I work with are all old and in a care home so not exactly in a position to be looking me up on facebook! But if I were working in care in a different role, I wouldn't be comfortable with the idea of people stalking my facebook to see what they could find out! Therefore I extend the courtesy of not doing it to any professionals I might see.

Though, facebook did take to suggesting my old CPN as a friend for a while, which was awkward!

I just accept that people will likely search their psych team. I've looked up an old psychologist before. Out of curiosity I suppose.

Jenna you can tell your friend to change her second name to Smith or ThatsMe as then she will only be able to be found by people that know the fake second name :-)

Smith! Clever!

Someone already searched it for me, but thank you!

I just put my middle name as my preferred name on all forms, and introduced myself as such. My payslip says Jenna, but most other things have my other name. Was just easier than having to start being anonymous on here.

That's possibly because your profile url is still camilla."surname". If you change that, it will be harder to find you I think.

I can see your point, it is probably courteous not to stalk people on facebook, but I also think it's a professional's responsibility to assume that there will be people who are discourteous and take the required precautions around internet privacy. I don't even stalk out of nosiness a lot of the time, it's just like a compulsion :P

She doesn't have her surname on facebook, but the problem for her lies in the url, as mentioned above.

I have someone on my facebook account who is named after their favourite tv character, and is totally not their real name. You could try that tactic, but obviously dont put a photo of yourself, which defeats the purpose.

Also if you have an uncommon surname, finding yourself is made easier. My psych has an uncommon surname in this country (he is foreign, it's more common in his native country) plus he has a photo of himself. He does have a few public posts, but they are all in his native language, which I dont speak a word of, so I cant understand what they are all about!

Clever Jenna!

I have the most ridiculous url so I'm fine :p

I'm probably really easily findable but nearly everything is set to 'close friends' and the things that aren't are only set to 'friends'.
I sometimes post pictures of my daughter on Facebook so I never post anything publicly.

I'd worry if people could see some of my statuses (such as one discussing the gender and possible diagnoses of kitchen utensils) because most potential employers check out candidates Facebook pages these days.

On a slightly related note, my step dad owns a company and one of his competitors once used aan embarrassing photo, found on Facebook, of someone in a slide show which pretty much screwed that guys career.
Scary stuff.

I don't understand why people choose false names on Facebook, yes it means you won't be found by people who you don't want to but you can use the privacy settings to make it very grad for people to find you. No one can find me if they are a friend (in which case they can already access all of my stuff) or a mutual friend, at which point they can't see my posts. If you're going to change your sane then surely you will tell any new people you meet that you gave a different name on fb so why not increase your privacy settings and just add them yourself? If you've posted under your own name in the past then your posts could probably still be found and you be traced to your current username. I've only come up against a problem once and that was when a friend of mine gad the same setting and we couldn't add each other. Easily solved by changing the settings when both online and then changing them back straight after.

I've never even thought of looking up any of my nurses etc on Facebook. I have had my tutor/drama teacher from college add me but I guess that wouldn't be as strange as a school teacher, I mean we were both adults then and now. Guess I'm not as good a stalker as I thought lol. I'm too busy stalking Tokio Hotel to bother with my drs. Though now I'm slightly intrigued..