Why It Is a Bad Idea to Add Strangers as Friends on Facebook

Have you seen people on Facebook with 5,000 friends (it is the maximum number you can have on Facebook)? I personally have seen quite a number of such profiles – usually they are real-life celebrities or web celebrities who get dozens (maybe more) friend requests per day and add people back to look friendly and open. Such people are looking for increased visibility on Facebook o make sure no one will miss any piece of content they create.

In my early days on Facebook I decided I should follow the same route and added back everyone who requested. But I quickly realized it was not particularly wise as I have been exposed to way too much spam after I thought that on Facebook I was supposed to be absolutely open and welcoming to everyone who happens to find me doing some peculiar search for people on Facebook – and adds me as a friend. After a while I realized that being a blond girl and open on Facebook is not exactly a good idea as I got marriage proposals from some guys in Turkey or Egypt almost on a daily basis – despite of the fact that my profile clearly states I am married myself.

So I decided I should reconsider my friending policy and only add people who I either know or who will probably have some professional interest in connecting with me as I’m not really into marriage proposals. It is actually not really difficult to determine who has a genuine interest in what you do as when you work in a particular industry you quickly grow a number of contacts in the industry that will help you decide when you get a friend request if the person is relevant or if he or she will be yet another spammer posting stupid images to your wall: usually when you see that you have some friends in common it will mean that you should be related in this or that way.

I know that the web 2.0 crowd is often more than willing to use Facebook for anything, including business purposes like promoting books we author and startups we launch. So it is just natural that in this particular industry a friend request does not necessary mean that you are friends to this person – instead you should expect that the person shares some interests with you and Facebook may be the place for you to have some interesting conversations.

This is exactly why I myself often send friend requests to fellow bloggers and tech journalists as well as startup people I know as I know that they only rarely keep Facebook for their real-life friends and family only. But if they do (or if they don’t use Facebook at all and only have an account because everyone does), I am never offended when my friend request is ignored.

But at the same time I happen to know how many friend requests a person may receive and I am not that self-confident to believe everyone who knows what web 2.0 has heard my name and will recognize my face as well. This is exactly why I myself invariably add a short personal message to introduce myself to the person I am adding as a friend in case he or she forgets who I am or have no idea about me at all (which is not a problem as I am a huge fan of a number of people who have probably never heard my name). I think it is only logical to introduce yourself to expect any friendship to emerge as this is exactly how it begins in real life.

But unfortunately not everyone actually follows this rather simple rule as people somehow expect that they should add a friend whenever they see a familiar name or face – hence the more popular your business is, the more friend requests you will receive on Facebook. And rather frequently people with this huge following will eagerly add everyone back until they reach the 5,000 friends limit without even thinking if there may be negative consequences of acquiring this huge crowd of friends without any idea who the vast majority of these people are at all.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I do believe there are plenty of reasons not to add everyone back unless you are certain in who the person is and what kind of interest in you he or she has and at least ask a polite question like “Sorry, I don’t seem to remember how I know you” before you reply to a friend request. My personal experience shows that people will be absolutely willing to answer this question with enough honesty for you to decide if you are interested in “just chatting” (do you really have time for that with a total stranger?) or if you really have something in common with this person and your connection will probably be a mutually beneficial one.

The first group of reasons to think before you add your next friend is purely virtual. The first thing you should think of when adding strangers as your Facebook friends will be the unwanted messages in your inbox, numerous invitations to some crappy applications and notifications that this or that friend has sold you for some huge amount. But while these problems can be tiresome and irritating they are not really that harmful so you can probably ignore them if you don’t mind getting hundreds of purposeless messages in your Facebook inbolx.

But I think that the main problem is in real-life dangers of connecting to unknown people just for the sake of connecting. Just keep in mind the volume of your private information that will be available to these people – without you knowing anything about them. Keep in mind that everyone who views your profile will be able to see all the information you make available to friend, including your phone number and address (well, if you choose to include them). Fortunately after browsing profiles of my friends who can certainly be characterized as web celebrities I can say that I have not found many with actually sensitive information (phone or address in particular) available for their friends to see but this is probably because they are among those who realize the real-life dangers while others can be less careful with handling their personal information.

Just think of it: you may not object to getting an occasional irrelevant message from a stranger but will you be happy to receive a phone call from someone you don’t know at all claiming to be your friend and explaining you are his only friend in town and he has just landed in your local airport and has nowhere to stay at all? Or maybe you would prefer this virtual friend to appear right at your doorsteps – with a suitcase and an explanation that he needs to stay somewhere for a couple of days and have no money to pay for the hotel?

And while the above two situations may not sound particularly realistic, there is another potential threat people rarely think of: just imagine how easy it must be for any ill-intended individual to use the data obtained from a combination of your Facebook profile information and your status updates. Suppose a thief knows your address and sees you putting a text “off to the airport, vacations finally!!!” as your status – is it really out of question to expect you will return to see your house without a number of particularly expensive items? I would not think it is totally out of question as these days we are well-known not to handle our private and sensitive information with enough caution and discretion and any scammer can use the valuable information we make public without thinking – be it on Facebook, Twitter or our blogs – for whatever evil plan he might have against you.

My conclusion is simple and is probably already a triviality but still worth mentioning as we still see people doing things they’d better never do online – like teens willingly sharing their nude pictures online: social networking can be fun and can offer you tons of new opportunities. But while social networks and social media sites offer new opportunities for all the good things to turn into reality, it can offer similar opportunities for all the bad things and use of private or sensitive information we make public without thinking can be very harmful – and not only in form of cyber bullying but can pose real-life dangers as well. So maybe it won’t hurt asking “How do I know you?” next time you get a friend request?