Some little snot set up a Facebook account in my kid's name!

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Hating the internet right now. How ironic...

My daughter has been asked by kids around her school whether she was actually the one who sent them the Facebook invitations, which I must confess has me impressed with those kids. I'm glad to know that some of them check before accepting. At least one kid whose name I recognized from the false profile apparently just clicks up anyone who asks him. Now I have to try and get in touch with his mom and let her know it! Ugh.

There are actually two profiles, but one seems to be deleted or something since it has almost no info and no friends... But it has a picture of her, a kid of 12, blurry though it may be. Someone obviously took a photo of her from the yearbook and put it on that one, so I tried to report a photo of my minor child, but there's always an error. Since that page won't even come up on my husband's desktop I can only hope that it simple isn't a functioning page anymore.

Meanwhile, the other page is up, has several friends, no picture thankfully, and a couple of interests listed... Dogs, which is accurate, suggesting the kid (I'm assuming) who did this does know something about her, and Hanna Montana, which proves they don't know that much. Facebook has a report feature but the most accurate complaint, a fake profile imitating someone else, will only be accepted if you enter the real profile's URL. But she's 12, she doesn't have one! I don't think that's so hard to grasp. I mean, this little whelp has decided to dabble in identity theft, and they have to get cocky and assume that everyone has a Facebook account to be copied? I considered setting one up but then the other one was made first, and I don't figure a service that can't imagine anyone being without a Facebook page is run by people smart enough to work out that the earliest page isn't always the real one. The best that could be done was to report a fake page made with a false name. We each reported it. I may suggest to my daughter that she ask anyone who gets an invitation from someone using her name to make the same report. It's all been kids in the yearbook who have been invited.

My child, bless her heart, thinks it's a random pick from some doofus who bought the yearbook. But she has gotten teased a lot this year so I could totally see this as a stupid prank. The good news is that she finds it annoying but hasn't let it trouble her. She just tells the other kids it isn't her. That's about all she can do. She says she'd like a Facebook page but I wasn't crazy about the idea before and even if I was I don't see how she could have one now, unless the other page is shut down.

Here's hoping that Facebook will say, "Whoa, two people with the same last name as this person say it's fake... hm, I wonder..." and do whatever it is that they do. Of course, it would also be funny if the kid received a message from one of her Aunties saying, "Hey, I didn't know you were on Facebook, how have you been? Tell me about yourself!" and panicked because they somehow never expected people older than 13 to become involved. But I won't ask any of them to do it... some kids would just send back rude notes and laugh some more. Though something tells me this one isn't the prankster he/she set out to be, considering how little has been done with it since Saturday.

So I tell myself. I'm still furious with this infringement, and Facebook's pathetic security choices for parents whose children have been impersonated.

You should report this to Facebook, someone did this to my girlfriend and caused some trouble

I've been trying to, but since my daughter doesn't have have a Facebook account, they won't let me finish clicking up the report. They insist on a URL for her real page (which she has not). I can't for the life of me figure out how to just contact them, they make it so hard to find any way to directly message them. I'll keep looking for a way, though.

Try reporting it here, from what its saying FB doesn't remove fake profiles
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=1 ... 594&v=wall

Just so sorry for that incident and scary to realize how vulnerable anyone is on the Internet - Yikes! I hope that can be resolved soon.


On another note.........I mentioned, just in passing, to another about Wrong Planet (without saying the specific name) where ASD individuals gather. She then retorted, "Is that a support group for Aspies?"

NO. Wrong Planet is not a support group (geez).

However, I might point out that Facebook is evidently a support group for Neurotypicals. That's my theory, anyway.

Also if your daughter is under the age of 13 you can report this account
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/hel ... m=underage
You can also go to the bottom left side of the persons profile page and use the report/block this person link

I thank you for those, Bob, but I'm wary of the first one because it just seems like more exposure to list her with all those others on the one page, and the page for underage users would imply that she is the one who made the account, or so it appears to me. And we've done all we could with the report link on the page, and it isn't enough. I'm contemplating mentioning it to the school principal but I'll hold off on that for a little, see if it clears itself up, since making a fuss, especially unnecessarily, can make things worse. If she tells all the kids she knows that it isn't her page, that might fix things up. I hope. As long as the issue remains within the group of kids at that school, anyway... I figure no one wants to look like a fool being "friends" with a fake, so once word gets around, maybe that will be the end of it.

It's pretty danged irritating that a stranger, young or old, can take the name of someone who doesn't even have her own e-mail account yet and launch her into that situation. Really scummy. That's what makes talking to the principal tempting... if he were to make enough of a fuss, if the kid involved was found out and if I am right in thinking this is a fairly lightweight prankster, the kid could get a lovely big scare to discourage further nonsense...

At least, that's how the dream plays out in my head...

Wow, that's scary. It is incomprehensible to me that there is nothing you can do to get Facebook to take it down, especially since she is a minor!

I wouldn't hesitate to go to the principal.

I wouldn't assume that it's necessarily a kid who did this. It might be a kid - or it might be an adult who got hold of a copy of the yearbook, found a name that didn't have an account, then made that account because he had some nefarious reason for posing as a kid. The friending would be to make the account look more real.

The interests sound like guesses to me. The fact that one happened to match may be coincidence; lots of kids are interested in dogs.

I would think Facebook would want to get rid of such stalking accounts, for legal purposes if nothing else. I would try to find an email address - or a real mail address - to send a letter to.

That's horrible. Do you have the number for her parents? I'd ring them and tell them what's happening.

After the Phoebe Prince bullying campaign in America, I think most parents are more aware that cyber bullying is a real issue.

I'm sorry about this. Facebook really sucks.

Well, either Facebook told them to stop it... which I'm skeptical about, considering how quick it was... or they panicked, because now the profile has a bunch of random letters for a name. I do wonder whether my daughter's response of quietly informing people that it wasn't her got around to the culprit and they got nervous about being found out. Unless that person owns up, I guess I'll never know. But it does smack of kid stuff, and I hope that's all it is. Heaven help us should someone pull such a thing again some day and really decide to get nasty. We know how to deal with it, pretty much, but it's a cold, creepy feeling to see how malicious the young can be.

Glad it worked out