

Nuisances of today’s social media age
(The following column originally appeared in the Fresh Ink blog on March 31, 2014)
I did not send you a friend request on Facebook, not that I don’t like you.
I did not win $90,000, not that I’d be averse to that.
And I did not realize how impossible it would be to let Facebook know my account had been compromised.
While I was sitting in a corporate meeting of editors recently wondering when the afternoon coffee and cookies would be wheeled in, someone somewhere created a faux Barbara Lombardo Facebook page and invited my Facebook friends and email contact people to be my friend. Some also received exciting but unfortunately false news about me winning $90,000.
The responses varied from curious (“Hey, sister, did you send out a friend request? We’re already friends”), to concerned (“I got a weird message from you that didn’t sound like you”), to creeped out (“Ugh, the boss asked to friend me”).
So, I changed what I hope are all of my passwords for email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, Tout, Storify, Pinterest and Instagram. I’ve run out of places of birth; favorite teams, movie stars and athletes; significant dates; lucky numbers; pets, dead or alive; street names and special cities; and schools, workplaces and organizations. I had to start a paper folder called “P*******S — DO NOT LOOK IN HERE.” Read more »