Don't know her? Don't send friend requests

I googled the trend and a quora question popped up: ‘How to make an unknown girl accept my friend request on Facebook’

“hiiiiiiiiiiiiii wud u lyk 2 b my frnd??????????actually i m unabl 2 send anymor frnd reqsts,so....sendin dis msg,if u wish den do send me a reqst,hv a nice day,byeee................”

“I found yu really cute :) Tat doesn mean am a jerk lik many on facebuk.., I wud suggest yu go thru my prof befo addin :P lol..!! Jus felt lik addin ya.., don mind..!!”   

These old messages I found in my Facebook inbox are nothing unexpected or chilling, they are merely echoes of the kind of messages most girls often see in their social media inboxes and wouldn’t give a second thought to. When I googled this trend to find out if it had a name, one of the results was a question in Quora- ‘How to make an unknown girl accept my friend request on Facebook’! 

'I did not know what stalking was till I was stalked' 'I feared my parents would stop my education' It was the first time, and it has been haunting me even after 10 years

In digital terms, ‘stalking’ has even become an easy, light-hearted word you use when you are casually checking out where your friends ate last night. It is only when an incident shakes you up that you realise how vulnerable social media can make you. It is not about what to infer from reports that Swathi was ‘friends’ with her killer on social media, but about cyberstalking being a phenomenon to dread and one that could possibly lead to worse.

Apart from the numerous friendship messages that women receive from unknown numbers, there is also that even more worrying issue of getting messages, calls or requests from a person you met for professional reasons or ran into incidentally.

The incidents appear harmless in isolation. Sometimes, it is an SMS saying ‘hi’ from a person you met at an official event after your business was done. You ignore the message, but if you are unlucky, you sometimes run into that persistent ‘stalker’ who gives you daily calls or SMSes until you block the number or make an official complaint. 

<noscript><a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/9465387/">What would you do if you were stalked?</a></noscript></div><p>Once, it was an innocent looking student volunteer at an event I was coordinating, who sent ‘casual’ WhatsApp messages, until I blocked the number.</p><p>On another occasion, it was repeated calls from an Ola auto-driver who was peeved because I cancelled his ride after he was late. I heard of a friend who got casual WhatsApp messages from a delivery boy after she used an app-based food delivery service. In another eerie incident, a roommate of mine got a ‘friend request’ from a man who she ran into in our apartment building, with whom she hadn’t shared even her name.</p><p>The messages and calls may not have had anything inappropriate or offensive to be termed as serious stalking. But what then, do you call these texts from people who contact you for no reason? How do you know if his intentions are bad or harmless, and if they are not ‘too’ harmless, why then is he picking out a random female who he does not know at all and texting her? And if his intentions are harmful, then you have an unknown person who possesses information about you: your name, number, where you work, and a variety of social media websites he can mine to get to know you better.</p><p>You needn’t of course accept friend requests, you can use elaborate privacy settings, try not to share your number as much as possible, and immediately report or block numbers which you are uncomfortable with. You can remove any ‘syncs’ that your phone number has with your Facebook account, avoid posting in public groups, and keep away any information that can help an unknown person find you.</p><p>But it is the digital age, and there is a footprint somewhere.</p><p>Like in the case of physical stalking, the change needs to come from the other side; if you don’t know her, don’t send her a ‘friend request’. If you have her number for an official reason, treat it like any other official contact and don’t repeatedly text her unless you have actually struck up a friendship. The ‘making frandship’ messages aren’t funny anymore.</p><p>(The writer is a freelancer whose articles have been published in The New Indian Express)</p><p><strong>Have you been stalked? <em>writetous@newindianexpress.com</em></strong></p>