shanen's Journal: Is any amount of Facebook paranoia too much?

At the highest level, I think phishing works. In general terms that means some of the suckers are going to get suckered by phishing broadcasts. However at the specific and personal level, I think it's even worse. If you are personally targeted for spear-phishing (or worse) by a serious "player", you might as well surrender and hand over your passwords. Just questions of how badly they want you and how many resources they are willing to invest in such toys as imposter wireless routers.

At the low level where I spend my days, the specific concern is mysterious SNS contacts, especially on Facebook. I'm actually quite specific on Facebook, at least as far as my background image goes. It's actually a longish text message, since (afaik) Facebook has no better mechanism to discourage unwanted "friend" requests. Verbose, but here it is:

Before sending me a friend request on Facebook, I ask you to consider this somewhat cautionary and philosophic message:

(1) If you are an old friend, coworker, student, or even one of my ancient teachers, then I am glad to hear from you and catch up on your news. If so, you must also know that I don't like impostors, so please send me a shared memory so I'll know you're you, and I encourage you to send me a handshake question, too.

(2) If you are just interested in my mumbles, say so and I'll "friend" you on that list.

(3) If you have some other reason for contacting and wanting to "friend" me, please say what it is. Clearly and succinctly.

(4) If you are ANY kind of spammer, then I will do anything I can to get your account nuked--unless I can help put you in jail first. I hate spamming scammers.

On rereading, it, I feel like I should include some specific comment about NOT wanting herds of friends. Especially not friends who want herds or to be part of a herd.

So the obvious problem is a recent increase in the suspicious strangers asking to be my friend. Only more suspicious in that they disappear when asked why. However that is only one symptom, and I have seen certain similar symptoms on other SNS websites. In the worst-case scenario, it could be a mistake to specify which ones...

So returning to the original question: Because of the timing I suspect there is something odd going on. I don't trust coincidences. Do you have any ideas about how to detect being targeted by nefarious hackers? Or any experiences to share about when it happened to you?

Couldn't decide what URL to put in that box, so I decided to use a typical example of how unhelpful Facebook "help" is. I think the basic policy of Facebook is that NOTHING is a problem unless they have a convenient solution at hand. So far even the governments have been unable to persuade them otherwise.