As you use social media you will begin getting different requests to be friends (I am going to use the Facebook term, but this same goes for other social media and what they call friends also). What should you do as you get these requests?

First, realize there are people who like to claim they have tons of friends on some social media and that is a way t make them seem important. Others keep their groups very small. For most of us we will fall somewhere in the middle.

If you accept friends from every request, then you need to be careful what you post and when on your social media as you do not know what they may do with it. For instance, generally I try not to post things showing I am on trips until afterwards. My pages are public and wrong minded people can abuse.

However, I tend to accept friends more than some as I am running for Kentucky-Tennessee Kiwanis governor and any member of those clubs I want to know about me and hopefully vote for me. So, if it appears to be a Kiwanian in that district (I can look at their friends also and get better idea, I will accept them.

A far as most people my comment when you get a friend request from a person you do not know, do not accept it. It will tell you if you have mutual friends on the request and that could be a reason to accept. For instance, I get requests from people in Asia I can see no connection to me, and I don’t accept them.

Treat friends on social media like you would human friends in real life, we are selective and sometimes not always sure why.

LinkedIn really is professional social media and not just a anybody get together, so most people would tell you to generally accept those requests, but I still give them a glance.

If you get a friend request from someone who you thought was a friend, then likely someone has created a fake page which in Facebook used to open a backdoor to personal information. Facebook says it has been closed a while. In that case you can click on their picture and look at the page and see how many friends. If just a few probably a fake. If only a couple posts and they are generic fake also probably and decline. If you see the person or have an email or phone contact and ask if they asked. Don’t panic if such a page appears as you, Facebook is usually pretty good on removing in a few days and if you go to their help, they have a way to report the page. It does not mean your site has been broken in.