Some of the less charming classmates of my kid have made a facebook page in her name and begun posting photos of her. Nothing gross, just unflattering so far.
When I try to report the page, I get this stupid circular chain of prompts that keep telling me that she has to report the fake profile herself from her valid profile. She is 12 and cannot legally make a profile from which to report the fake one.
Can someone please post a link to a page where I can explain this, rather than following a flow chart of options that do not include the actual problem?
My advice would be to create a profile, lie about her age to get around the restriction, and then report from there using the mechanism they have inplace. Just don’t put any photos or information on it, adjust security settings to make everything private.
That will be more straightforward than trying to navigate some labyrinth of customer non-service for a case that they didn’t anticipate.
I believe you can also create an account as the parent, and file everything the same way you would as if it were you. You don’t have to include any private information when you create the account, and can delete it later.
Call the police non-emergency number in your area.
1: The police might assist and pay a visit to the fraudsters.
2: If the police don’t help, you’ve documented action and created a paper trail you will need
3: Send your own cease and desist letter to the parents/guardians (have witness/notary and send certified mail and CC the police)
4: Stick to facts; resist the urge to use emotional language
YES… the police might very well assist. If not, you still helped your case. Take screen shots of the site and keep a written, well-organized log.
Don’t fail to under estimate the importance of being diligent and organized.
Same thing happened to my daughter, at 13. I was able to report the page while logged into my account. It was then locked down and removed. One of the reporting options was “fraudulent page” ( or something), but I didn’t need to be in her account to do it.
I understand your point, Sateryn76, but there are a lot of school districts that are getting involved in off-campus bullying these days. I’d rather see that than getting the police involved.
I agree about the police, but I would recommend the OP contact the parents of the kids, and see if that takes care of it. If not, then I would escalate to the police, if for no other reason than to get the *parents *of the bullies on the radar of the local PD.
It doesn’t need to be a big deal - you can approach this as kids will be kids to the other parents. Most bullies are not Scut Farkas, and most parents are perfectly normal.
Thanks everyone for your help. Please do keep it coming. It’s early in the morning here so I have a busy day ahead.
The school asks that parents report bullying as they have a zero tolerance policy.
The photos are being taken at the school and all the ‘friends’ on the fake profile are in her year.
I will be talking to the admin.
I’ve managed to get a report in as all the kids involved are underage, but as yet, nothing has happened. Reading online, facebook tend to be slow to useless in these sorts of cases. Not saying always, but it’s a common complaint.
I can’t open the page fully because of its privacy settings. I have the names of three kids who do have access, one who is a friend of my kid, one who is probably a friend of the faker (I don’t know who this is, so can’t contact their parents) and one who is the child of a friend of mine. The latter said she knows most of the names on the ‘friend’ list as they used to be her friends IRL but have now excluded her.
I will ring the non-emergency police line and see what they suggest.
Just an update. I finally got through to facebook by reporting both the faked account and the creator of the faked account (whoever that was) as the twelve year old children they are.
The fake account seems to have gone.
I never got any notification from facebook that they’d so much as received my report.
The school is investating further as this sort of thing warrants suspension. They’ve narrowed it down to a small and specific group of girls (The Usual Suspects) and will keep poking till they get names.
A friend also has links with the parent and will do her own sleuthing as she’s mightily pissed off, her kid has also been on the receiving end of TUS.
Even my mother has taught TUS and says this sort of thing is right up their alley (also where she’d like to plant a swift boot), and not to expect anything like an admission or apology.
The police shrugged and said there was nothing they could do.
The help from the teachers & other parents has been great & we hang on to the fact that we found out about this because so many kids wanted to ‘friend’ her and only found the fake page.
Various people tried. Like I said, I’ve never had access. We had someone who did have access, but she was blocked before we could get any shots. The school Principal was going to try last night (she has contacts amongst the younger set), I haven’t heard the outcome of that attempt.
There are other avenues. We got a list of ‘friends’ that are part of the extended social circle we all inhabit, so we know their mothers.
If it’s still there. The main thing I want is for it to be gone.
When I say The Usual Suspects, that is how they are known by the teaching staff. That is how they are known by the parents, that is how they are known by their swim coach which last week banned them from traveling with the rest of the team.
These are not anonymous bastards flying below the radar, they’re the queen bitches and proud of it.
The girls admitted it was them to the kid, apologised and closed the page.
For all our secret machinations and reporting - the kid just told some of her classmates about the page, word went round and it was peer pressure that forced the girls to act.
My kid isn’t a ‘cool’ kid, or a ‘popular’ kid, but it seems she has a lot of friends.
Oh, and she just got some test results back and she’s in the top 3, 4 & 5 percent of New Zealand 12 year olds for Science, English & spelling respectively. Maths results aren’t in yet.
Gone from worried to incredibly proud since breakfast.
Glad to here your good news! Sorry to hear that the police there “shrugged and said there was nothing they could do.” Something needs to change so that children and adults are protected from such deliberate maliciousness.
I agree, the laws haven’t caught up with technology yet.
I’ve just been on the phone to the school principal and the three girls were given the chance to speak to their parents last night. No-one is treating this lightly, even though the page itself contained nothing nasty (they were trying to keep it looking genuine), the parents understand how quickly this could have become a shitstorm of nuclear proportions.
No-one has a facebook page anymore. I am assured this is merely the start.
I thanked the principal and told her the fact that it wasn’t just the staff but the student support was a credit to the school & to her leadership.
[FOGYISM]Back in my day my father would have just told me to punch them in the head and that would be the end of it. On my father’s part, at least.[/FOGYISM]