Hey, stranger

I am sorry to say that my fears were confirmed.

About a week ago, someone by the name of Ramadhan Awang added me as a friend on Facebook. Now, I have never heard of this fellow before, but he had more than 30 friends in common with me (32, I believe).

Not being able to figure out who this person was, I sent him a message asking him who he was. Who knows, he could be someone I had been in the same room with during one of the various gatherings among Malaysians here in France. (The friends he had in common with me were Malaysians in France, hence this hypothesis on my part) But after several days without a reply, and seeing that I now had 40 friends in common with him, I decided to employ a "drastic measure" and posted on my status the question "Who is Ramadhan Awang?" (not in those exact words, but you get the gist of it)

Unfortunately no one was able (or willing) to give me an answer. Those who replied were unaware of who this fellow was, as were those to whom I posed the question directly.

As of now, I have 43 friends in common with him, and I somehow believe that the number will continue to rise. But I doubt that I will be contributing to that number, since I have come to the conclusion that no one knows who he is at all.

But this is disturbing, because it means that if a complete stranger (or stalker) could just add one "'add-friend'-happy" person and so get the friends of this person to add him too. And the more people you know who are friends with a certain person, the more secure you feel adding him...after all, where's the problem if he's vouched for by 40 of your friends?

So I'm glad I decided to restrict access to my profile (especially contact details) to my friends only, and not have it available to the friends of my friends as well. And I'm not about to add you if I don't know who you are or why you're adding me, not even if you are friends with ALL of my friends!

And I do wish that my friends would be able to provide me at least a tiny bit of information about their "friends"...