A
female
age
51-59,
anonymous
writes:We have a 16-year-old daughter. A few weeks ago she joined Facebook; we allowed her to join it on the condition that her friends were people she knew only in the real world, and she's stuck to that - vigorously, I might add. In fact, when she does use it, it's mainly to help others with homework, rather than inane chit-chat! Her photo wall on it would be considered bland by most people's standards... just a series of pictures of the local area, and none of her on it, nothing identifiable. However, she came to us about a problem on Facebook, rather than, like some other parents, who normally get alerted to problems their children get up to on the site.She told us she'd kept getting numerous messages and friend requests from PPI (payment protection insurance) salespeople, and the message content wasn't disturbing, just "Click here to claim your payment protection insurance", and no matter how many times she'd blocked them they kept coming back - as corporate accounts, I should add, not individuals.It wasn't just PPI, also firms offering "if you've had an accident claim no-win no-fee" etc and payday loan companies. This isn't something she's looked at or even interested in, so how they found her on Facebook is... worrying to say the least.I know parents worry about paedophiles/stalkers etc. on social networking, but PPI salespeople? That's a new one on me.We complained to Facebook, but they told us there was nothing they could do, they were perfectly within their rights to advertise PPI to whoever they so wished.She's upset about this and now is hesitant to login, although she told me when she checked her email she had 40 messages from various PPI/payday loan/no-win-no-fee companies, disguised as friend requests - and they weren't accounts in the name of individuals (no "John Smith" as login name, rather "MegaCorp Name").This is upsetting her and she told us she wants help; is this a form of cyber-bullying, or is it spamming?What can we do as a family? It's not her fault [she's a responsible internet user and LOVES sites like stackoverflow.com and theregister, only has Facebook to communicate with those who won't use email or text].
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female
reader, Daisy_Daisy +, writes (20 February 2013):
 She needs to go to her Privacy Settings How You Connect. Change the settings so that only friends can look her up, only friends of friends can contact her for friend requests, and only friends can message her. It should be quite simple, just takes 5 minutes and hopefully it'll solve the problem.
A
reader, anonymous, writes (20 February 2013): http://www.dearcupid.org/question/online-dating-friendships-general-safety-and-security-protecting.html
here this will help a bit. Especially googling her name and email address, they have to have gotten this from somewhere.
OP Facebook privacy is very advanced these days. You can set it to only friends view her profile, she can also set so that her name won't come up in Facebook search. She can also set it that she only gets messages from friends, although those companies do pay Facebook to be allowed to send those kind of messages.
She should also install an adblocker on chrome if she uses that browser and if she doesn't she should start, it's the best and safest one. Also she should go into settings in Facebook and turn off her email notifications. That way she won't be spammed in her email too.
It would be a good idea to change all her passwords OP, every one for each site should be different. She also needs to change her security question, I could probably figure that out in about ten minutes using the info she has on facebook.
So change the privacy on her account the maximum settings and just ensure she has a good up to date, free antivirus like avast or MSE.
Other than that don't worry about it too much, just make sure she knows, online you never click adds, you never click on spam either. If she gets adblock she wont have to deal with ads anymore and frankly browsing the web with no ads is joyful to say the least. No flashing crap about losing weight or winning iphones just the page you want and nothing else.
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