Do I REALLY know you?

If you received an email or friend request from Mickey Mouse, you wouldn't automatically assume it was Mickey right? You'd know that perhaps it's a jokester, or Disney trying to get you to buy tickets to Disneyland or something.

Say you have a friend, and her name is Lynda Little. One day you log into your email account, and you see a message "LyndaLittle wants to follow you on Twitter!" (Or Lynda Little requests to add you as a friend on Facebook. Or you receive an email from a new address lyndal@somewhere.com.)
Many people, if they see a friend's name, will automatically assume the person really is their friend and immediately approve the request.

One thing to remember is: you don't really have any proof that the person is who he or she claims to be (unless your friend told you personally)! Anyone can create a Twitter account (or Facebook account, email address, etc.) with any name.

On Twitter, I've received a number of requests from people whose accounts were closed by Twitter because of "suspicious" activity. Some of those people even had account names that included my last name (I guess to try to seem like a family member?)

On Facebook, if your friend has listed his or her (verifiable) email address, updated his or her profile, posted recent pictures, etc., you may have enough proof that the person is really your friend. But if not, you don't really know! Unlike a telephone call where you can hear your friend's voice, or a letter, where you can see the handwriting and writing style, an online request doesn't reveal anything distinctly unique about a person.
It's also pretty easy for Mr. Stranger to create a fake account that looks really believable - say your friend has a public MySpace page but no Facebook account, what's to stop Mr. Stranger from copying your friend's picture and other public details from MySpace, then creating an Facebook account with that info, and adding similar people as friends listed on your friend's MySpace page. Your friend's Facebook account will look like it was created by your friend... but it wasn't!

If there is a person whose real identity I can't really verify, I'll either wait until there's more information posted to his or her profile, or I'll just mention it when talking to him or her (in person, on the phone, or some verifiable online method of contact) to double-check it was really him or her who created the account.

If you confirm Mr. Stranger as a friend, he'll have access to your personal information when he shouldn't. But actually, you shouldn't put ANYTHING really confidential on these web sites in the first place.

I'm sure most of the people who request to be your friend really are your friends.
But just something to think about before you approve your next friend request.