Thanks Maddielee and D_gw. I’m still very confused about it all, the names I found on mine, such as Reba Merkintire and others. It’s just plain weird, but then again, although I’m no brilliant tech person, I think ( thought-LOL) that I was fairly savvy navigating around the internet. Hmmmmmm!

Very interesting!

I have some of the same names on my list, but not all, and I have some different ones. It is odd that they have "Me". And my FB tells me they may not actually be following me, just have names similar to "following me". So I'm not sure what's going on. How can you see who is following you? And if they've "blocked" you in some way, can you still see them?

Good question, Bpath.

Click the little triangle in the top right corner and choose Settings. Then on the left side, choose Public Posts. That will let you choose whether only your Friends can follow you, or if you let just any old riffraff follow you (public). But I don't see how to see your followers who are not your friends, because I already had mine set up to let only Friends follow me. Except my local League of Women Voters page,whom I Like and Follow. They follow me. Hmm.

It's a hoax I heard.

No. This is not right. Those people are not following you.

To find out who is following you click on friends , then following. It will show you who is following you.

Hoax or not, it does not hurt to block the names. Twenty names came up for me, several the same as Lynn. Two written in Arabic.

Call me utterly ignorant, but why is it bad to have strangers following you? What are strangers getting out of it?

Sheesh, for me it’s all about privacy. I’ve kept my Facebook friend group very small. My family, most of whom live out of state including my close cousins, and my good friends. That’s it. There, I can post family photos without worrying, and they can post family photos of their children and grandchildren for me to see. I love that. It keeps me feeling close to my family and friends, but I don’t want strangers having access to those pictures, or knowing where I’m going on vacation, when, etc. That’s what bothers me the most. I value my privacy very much.

If you type anything at all in that box for blocking, you'll get all kinds of names, who most likely are not following you. If you type enough letter combos and hit "block", you'll block everyone, and never do anything else. It's a hoax. You can set in your settings who can follow you.

I went to settings and when I got to block users-- there were 3 names listed and then it said.The list below shows results for people whose profile includes words similar to "following me." These people may not be your friends or followers

That list included several of the ones you mentioned like Reba Merkentire, Mela Hana, Meera Hana, Megan Farrab Very bizarre but I figured it can't hurt. don't know what to make of it. I will say that sometimes I log in with a phony account that I made, and check on myself ( my real profile) to see what is visible. A few times if I have posted on a public page, my post shows up and I think my profile pic shows up. I guess I am less bothered by that.

In any case I think it's a good idea to log in as someone else or even try searching your name and then facebook. See what comes up. that is what anyone could see googling that

Thank you!

I had 20 to block .A few had the same names as Lynn had. I don't know if this is a hoax but I blocked all those in that list. And I have no followers. ( I'm socially boring)

The list of who I blocked:

Mel HanaMegan FarrabeeMehrab X BehjooDeepAk MewaraMel ClarkinAnnalyn Medez Torres BaldevinoMehedi Hasan AkashMohaiminul Islam MehediSachin Meenaআহম্মেদ ফয়সালMehenaz Tabassum BabliMelody Namute MelodyReba MerkentireSagar MeshramBj MehjabinAbhishek MeenaXuwi Mehraj Da Rআহম্মেদ সুমনAsit MeshramNoor Azam Mehsood

OMG, Did any of you bother reading the article madilee linked to? None of these people are following you!

Ugh, Ok, I don't often read beyond the first couple posts, so OK, I know now. I want to delete my posts now but I'll leave in case it's helpful.

Notice the similarities in the names. Most have ME, as in "following ME". Type something else in the search. You'll spend your whole life blocking people. They are not following you.

LOL A few years ago my SIL had heard you could see who is creeping on your site too. Bet this was the same thing. She was wrong. It really is mostly about how much you lock your site down, what you use it for. I had 15 names BTW, and for the life of me would never be able to figure out why anyone would follow me in particular but anyone they do not know!!

Ditto the others who are saying this is a hoax.

"4) type in “FOLLOWING ME”, but don’t type in the quotation marks. It doesn’t have to be in caps either."

Where you are typing is just a search form to look up EVERYONE on facebook. If you put "Linda" in there, it will list 15 different Lindas. They are not people following you.

I must not be very popular - I only have one person following me - a realtor named Mary-Jane in Maryland. She seems harmless enough.

I still say it's a good exercise to (woops) create a fake account- and then log in as that account and try to snoop on your real self.

Its a hoax. But never believe that if you choose to put info out there on the internet, you are totally private. Then again, I've seen peeps on here list first/last name, city/state they live in, etc. People don't realize how easy it is to find someone. Then those people post when they are out-of-town. Never, ever would I put travel plans on the internet. Or show vacay pictures while actually on vacay!! Wait till you are back.

sheilaaus122 you don't even need to go to all that trouble of a fake account. FB gives you the opportunity to view as the general public or as someone specific - on your profile page in your cover photo lower right corner click on the 3 dots next to Activity Log and choose View As

Yes DLM I have done that but ever since that expression of trust but verify... it resonates with me. :)

This thread proves how easy it is for false information to spread.

I am surprised by the amount of people that post without reading a thread. How can you participate in a conversation (which is how I view threads) when you don't "listen" to anyone else?

I don't read every word of every post but I do skim to get the gist of the thread before I post.

The second and third post in this thread said the privacy issue was a hoax AND explained the "ME" results.

I've set my Fb privacy to pretty private but when I commented in a (public) group, it showed up in my friend's feed...and she's not in that group. Mind you, it was a public group. So now I only comment in private or secret groups. I'm not sure what happens with closed groups.

Thanks for posting that, I have had my privacy settings very controlled for a long time but maybe at the beginning of my FB account I did not.......I just now had 21 unknown followers, one name was written in maybe Chinese, 3 in something Arabic looking, and all the other names were a bit non-traditional/conventional in name or photo........eewwww. I don't post often but sometimes check in somewhere, though never when traveling unless DH is home. This is rather creepy.....and every now and then I get friend requests from strangers, generally older men (my age group) but with no mutual friends.......like how do they find you?

ok, this is weird.......I just posted above and it put my name on in it, versus my screen name.......what is with that? The posts above it have screen names....... maybe I will read the Houzz gripe thread next.

Thanks for posting that, I have had my privacy settings very controlled for a long time but maybe at the beginning of my FB account I did not.......I just now had 21 unknown followers, one name was written in maybe Chinese, 3 in something Arabic looking, and all the other names were a bit non-traditional/conventional in name or photo........eewwww

I give up!!!

FAKE NEWS! Folks this is a fake rumor. Scroll up. There are several posts about why it is fake and why you are pulling up names.

From Snopes:

https://www.snopes.com/facebook-paying-spies/

Ok, I guess that I don't give up yet.

Do you all realize that when you type "following me" into the search box, it just comes up with a list of names of people whose profile includes words similar to "following me." You can type any random thing in that box, and it will come up with a list of people. Try typing in "abc", and you will get another list. NONE of these people are following you!!!!!

Ok, I can go with that, but wouldn't we all get the same list?

Maybe, but I think that the Facebook algorithm takes your location and other factors into account.

In my opinion Facebook is practically synonymous with "spying on me" and even more so if you log into every other thing with FB. I've never done the latter but no longer use it anyway because of the privacy problem (along with the obnoxious blather of friends of friends that I don't know or care to hear from).

OMG read.the.post

Not sure why I missed this before, but I just did the above and had to block over 50 names. Yikes.

I don't know about this...when I did this, I got a bunch of weird named people in that list and it says at the top that it included people whose profile contain words similar to "following me". So, I am not sure they are actually following ME per se.

I'm not sure what "following me" means, but on Houzz, I have 25 people following me. I only know two of them, and one of those is deceased. One is in Machakos, Kenya, and two of them are following no one except for me.

I follow a few people here, but I do not get anything out of it except that I can remember who they are, in case I want to contact them.

I got out of that FB group called ”View From My Window” because suddenly there were MANY views from Ukrainian ”windows” popping up. I started to wonder what kind of harvesting was going on. I HATE getting friend requests from men with 2 first names that are usually ”doctors at UN”.. Gives me the creeps.

This is a RIDICULOUS complaint made four years ago!! I think in 2022 everyone who posts anything on SOCIAL MEIDA of any sort is putting what ever out for PUBLIC scrutiny. Nothing done on the internet will be private forever NOTING. Everything can be hacked!! Privacy is not a thing any longer and if you think you care about your privacy you for sure would not be on any social media and I don't even think you would own a cell phone. That was the trade off when the world chose all the 'in the cloud' communication. You are leaving a digital footprint that will out live you and your grand children, just sayin.

scroll up to read Terriks

It makes it pretty clear people don't read threads when they post to them.

Maybe all CAPS would help.

I saw it was from 2018 AFTER I hit submit, lol, BUT, I did go block some strange followers, so I don’t know what kind of hoax it is, if they ARE actually there!! Don’t know…don’t care.

sigh

Annie Deighnaugh

said

Not sure why I missed this before, but I just did the above and had to block over 50 names. Yikes.

Please read the posts from Maddielee and me before you waste any more time on this hoax!

And read this article that was posted Maddielee posted 4 years ago.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/09/the-following-me-list-on-facebook-is-a-hoax.html

Oh well, I only read the first post and then the new posts. I figured it didn't make a lot of sense. Thanks for that link, there are so many silly things that go around. Whatever....no biggy....