Ninety-nine mutual friends, yet no clue who they are.
That’s what many Seaholm students think when they receive friend requests from fake profiles floating around Facebook’s Seaholm network.
“I will only accept people if I know of them or if they are friends with my friends,” junior Maddy Schiefer said.
Still, many students will accept anyone as long as they’re in the Seaholm network, including junior Sarah Nagia.
“Even if I haven’t heard of them before I’ll accept them,” Nagia said. “But only if they’re in the Seaholm network.”
Seaholm Facebook users may have concerns that these fake accounts will cause trouble, but according to Birmingham Police Department Detective Corporal Ron Halcrow, there are no criminal charges for the creator of a fake Facebook profile unless the page is harmful to the subject of the profile.
“Where people get into trouble is when they create an imposter page and make it so the person that has that page feels threatened, harassed, intimidated, scared, and fearful of their safety,” Halcrow said.
According to assistant principal Deb Boyer, no action is taken by the administration unless the profile is viewed as a threat in any way.
“Earlier this year was the first time that we were ever notified that somebody had put themselves out there as a fake Seaholm student,” Boyer said. “It didn’t seem like there was anything we needed to do, there was no implied threat. It didn’t disrupt the educational process… so we didn’t do anything.”
However, Boyer said if there were ever any threats on a fake Facebook account, administration would take action.
“What we normally do in case of a threat, whether it’s on a Facebook or whether it’s written on a toilet stall, is to call the police in and we have it assessed,” Boyer said. “The police have a way of assessing the information given in terms of whether or not it represents a realistic threat or whether it’s a random general threat, and based on their interpretation of that, we’d take the appropriate action.”
Nagia thinks that fake Facebook profiles are nothing to worry about.
“Most of them are just a joke between friend groups so it’s fine,” she said.
Boyer agrees that false accounts are not a great concern as long as they are not disrupting the educational process, just like the profiles that were brought to her attention earlier in the year.
“We couldn’t discern that anyone was threatened in any way,” Boyer said. “It just seemed like a strange and random joke.”
But she also adds that students should be cautious when posting information on the Internet.
“Just in general you always have to be careful of not so much who you answer, but of the information you post about yourself,” she said. “That’s really what’s problematic because somebody can take anything and take it out of context and send it out about you, so in my mind, it’s what you put out there that you have to be careful with.”
Halcrow agrees that it’s always important not to allow fake profiles to access a ton of information from your Facebook page.
“It’s kind of liking writing someone’s number on a bathroom stall, ‘For a good time call so and so,’” Halcrow said. “Except now it’s Internet based instead of just with a pen and paper.”
