another reason to dislike Facebook
 

I Just got a message from notification+kqsqrean@facebookmail.com that a poet friend who died in 2013 "wants to be friends on Facebook."

I got the same invitation, Max. And deleted it.

I guess I've been naive, but I've assumed that when FB told me acquaintances wanted to connect with me, this was true. I'm angry to learn that when I've written to people from my past who I thought had reached out to me, they might have wondered why the hell I was writing to them.

FB doing this seems to me so dishonest and unethical that I'm surprised it's allowed (further evidence, I suppose, of my naivete).

I don't think it's Facebook per se that does this. Scammers adopt the identities of folk and fish for Friendships thus disguised. I have once or twice received requests from people with whom I am already "Friends" and people now and then discover that their name - and even picture - has been used in this way, and post warnings to that effect.

I am not sure what the scammers stand to gain. Report the buggers and the accounts will be closed.

we can only act on reports from the person who's being impersonated
 

Thank you, Ann. You may be right, though after trying to report this, I'm not certain.

The FB help center at https://www.facebook.com/help/263149623790594 includes "How do I report a fake account that's pretending to be someone I know?"

First step, visit the fake account. I've deleted the message I got. The only account I find in my dead friend's name is the one she used when alive. I'm already "friends" with that account, and I don't see post-death activity other than people remembering her, so if someone has hacked the account, I'm not savvy enough to find evidence. Apparently the message came from a new account, which I can't find.

Might not matter:

"Please keep in mind that we can only act on reports from the person who's being impersonated."

A modern riff on "Dead Souls," it seems. What a sick practice.

I was a victim of this too. And I accepted before realizing that the friend was dead.

I know there is a way to "unfriend" people -- can anyone tell me how to do it?

Maybe, before losing track of the account, report it. (See instructions at https://www.facebook.com/help/263149623790594) If Ann is right about what's going on, Facebook really should have a way to prevent someone from doing this.

You might also make a note of the account's other "friends," who might benefit from being told what's going on. (If I'm on the friends list, then we know that it's the poet's actual account that the requests came from.)

I got the invitation today. I suspect that people who have liked the Light page have been targeted, since that would be my only connection to the poet in question.

Gail, unfriending is easy. Just go to the page in question and click on the little box that says "Friends" and currently has a check mark in it. That will bring up a little drop-down list, and the last item is "unfriend."

I believe it's Facebook itself that does it, just like LinkedIn.

When I joined Facebook, the invitations I received were not emails but on the actual Facebook site, pretending that all sorts of people had requested me as a friend. I checked with a few of them, and none of them had issued such a request. Same thing with LinkedIn.

I suspect that both these sites are themselves the scammers, and when you sign up, they go through your address book sending you bogus invitations from people who are already in their database. I don't see how an independent scammer unconnected with their sites could do that.