Detect Frenemies Creeping Around Your Social Network and Protect Against the Frenemy

To a lot of people, a frenemy, or frienemy may just be someone they accepted as a friend on their social network or in their social circle who turned out to be a passive aggressive jerk, only acting as a friend. The frenemy has nothing but mean things to say to and about you, and usually they post their disrespectful comments all over the things you post on your social network. All that may be correct about the frenemy, except what a lot of people may not know is that there can be a lot more problems from having frenemies on your social network than just having a passive aggressive “ jerk” for a friend. However, the passive aggressive “jerk” frenemy is just one type. There are actually a few different types of frenemies that I have found throughout my research, some of which will make the passive aggressive “jerk” type of frenemies look like a saint, as they can be quite harmful and even life threatening. These other types of frenemies, which are quite often gained from toxic relationships, or being an "enemy of the state", are not as widely experienced as the “jerk” type gained from interpersonal relationships, nor are they really publicized, and can easily go undetected. With the risks that some frenemies impose, it's important to know how to spot a frenemy so that you can protect yourself from those that pose risks.

These other types of frenemies are looking to get a lot more from you than the passive aggressive “jerk” just trying to get some kind of reaction from you. What they are looking for depends on the type of frenemy they are, but for the most part it is personal information that they are after, as personal information can be used to destroy, gain access to, or make an enemy's life hell. Which ultimately is what all types of frenemies strive for, whether they are the passive aggressive, toxic relationship, interpersonal relationship, or frenemy of the state. Even the frenemies that are using someone's good will toward them to serve their own means are negatively impacting the life of the person on the other end of the relationship. People who may have had to deal with corruption in the justice system, a psycho ex-girlfriend/boyfriend, a stalker, or maybe even a backstabbing friend are the typical target victims for some of these other types of frenemies. Of course a backstabbing friend most likely won’t be very life threatening, as they are usually backstabbing because they are just to self absorbed that it's all just a contest to them to try to prove they are better then you. However, the cases of stalker and corrupt justice system frenemies are much more serious, and should not be taken lightly.

If your enemy is cunning enough there may not be any real obvious signs that your enemy has become your frenemy , making it difficult to spot a frenemy unless you are just as cunning. For that reason, tips to make it difficult for your enemy to infiltrate your social network and only the most common tactics that a frenemy might use to gain your acceptance will be focused on. However, if you know your enemy, who you are up against, and how you can get into their psyche, it will help you to recognize the more cunning frenemies that are out there. Knowing how your enemy thinks, and the actions they are willing to take not only helps to detect those more cunning frenemies, but it helps you be able to protect yourself from them better.

How Does a Frenemy Creep Into Your List?

Generally the tactics that an enemy will use to gain your acceptance as a frenemy are just variations of manipulation and deception. Of course if your enemy does happen to know how to hack into a computer they will have the tool of technology as well. The deception and manipulation begins when your enemy, often times appearing as a stranger, requests to be your friend using a bogus profile. How they build these bogus profiles can vary depending on how cunning the enemy is, but for the most part they tend to target your friends list and your interests to build a profile tha t will exhibit possibilities of an interpersonal relationship to deceive you and convince you they might make a good friend. They start by gaining a few friend acceptances from the friends you have on your list. If you happen to have a group of friends that are part of a type of help, support, or problem addressing group, they may even use a name that indicates they are part or in support of that group.

So how can you tell these bogus profiles apart from the real profiles to spot a frenemy? Well if your enemy doesn’t have too much going on upstairs, they will leave you with plenty of clues. A suspicious profile will oftentimes exhibit a lack of interaction. This can include all of the following types of interaction: Personal information, personal pictures and/or video uploads, comments, new interests, and friends – specifically friends who work with, went to school with, or are located next to the owner of the profile. Catching sight of these shortages will help you weed out a lot of the bogus profiles and prevent the enemy from creeping into your friends list. Without your frenemy acceptance, your enemy can’t get very far with what they are trying to accomplish.

So how can you tell these bogus profiles apart from the real profiles to spot a frenemy? Well if your enemy doesn’t have too much going on upstairs, they will leave you with plenty of clues. A suspicious profile will oftentimes exhibit a lack of interaction. This can include all of the following types of interaction: Personal information, personal pictures and/or video uploads, comments, new interests, and friends – specifically friends who work with, went to school with, or are located next to the owner of the profile. Catching sight of these shortages will help you weed out a lot of the bogus profiles and prevent the enemy from creeping into your friends list. Without your frenemy acceptance, your enemy can’t get very far with what they are trying to accomplish.

A Few Safety Measures You Can Apply

1. One safeguard that can be taken is to set your list of friends to only be seen either by you or friends only. You don’t want to allow just anyone, or even friends of friends to be able to view your friends list as that can provide your enemy with a way to deceive you.
2. Another safeguard that can be applied is setting your personal information, such as your location, job, school, etc., to be viewed only by you or friends only. That information could easily be used to do harm against you as well, if left to the public eye.
3. As anything you say on a social network can and will be held against you, setting your posts, comments, photos, status updates, etc. to only be viewed by you or friends only is a great safeguard that provides you with almost the same amount of protection as the 5^th Amendment to the Constitution. If you want to leave your likes and interests viewable to anyone to make your profile a little friendlier, then it would be a good idea to make sure that you take the advice of the last safety measure.
4. If you are dealing with an enemy who happens to know the back end of computers well enough to hack into one, you may want to take a look at your social networking account and security settings. You will want to see if your social network offers a log of recent account activity, unrecognized device log-ins, email notifications for unrecognized device log-ins, and an option for secure browsing. All of these features will help secure your social network greatly.
5. One last safety measure you can take to prevent a frenemy from creeping into your friends list is to really look at the profile of people requesting to be your friend. You will want to look for things such as; personal photos that will give you a clear idea of what that person looks like, how active on the social network the person is, the person’s friends and how they are connected to their friends, and other evidence that would be hard to replicate unless the person is in fact a real person.

Copyright 7/11/2011 by Aubrey Love

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