simka2 Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Many of you know I went trough a traumatic experience at a church dh and I were staff pastors. This involved a Sr. Pastor who has major control and other issues. It involved spyware on my old computer and a lot of horrid things I really do not want to go into. Because this was a huge church I always had quite a few friends on fb. Because of security issues I had created a system where I did not accept friend requests from anyone who was mutual friends with this man. Someone has alerted him to this. I can now see that we have mutual friends, but he has found a way to block my being able to see who. In a sense I feel betrayed in my own friends circle, but I do not know for sure how this has developed. I do have reason to think it is someone who recently friend requested and I declined may have inadvertantly alerted him. I care deeply for this person (dh officiated their wedding), but she had the former pastor as a friend (she is a young adult and had a huge friends list) She knew the whole story, so I simply explained why I could not accept. She said she forgot they were even friends and if she unfriended him would that be okay. I accepted. Now, about 2 weeks later he has figured out how I am doing this. She may have innocently told someone, but he is alerted and I cannot ascertain who our new mutual friend is. Sorry, this is confusing. :glare: Is there a way to save this fb account if I do not know who the enemy is in my friends list is? Do I just need to create a new, very small account? Can I import my pics? Please be gentle as this is very triggering for me. I am so sad and upset. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynn Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 You can block a person from having any access to your fb page if your name comes up as mutual friend the person you block should not be able to see you at all. does that make any sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheReader Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Even if you have mutual friends, you can type in his name and Block him. Then he will never be able to see any of your stuff, at all, nor you, his. I have a person blocked who is friends with people on my friends list. He cannot see anything, even if I comment to a mutual friend. It's actually funny at times, because I can watch my friends seemingly talk to themselves and know it must mean that he commented, but as I have him blocked, I can't see his side of the conversation. I assume it does the same to him when I comment to those friends. You do not need to rearrange anything or change your FB. Just set all your stuff to "friends only" so that friends of friends can't see it, block this person just in case, and you are fine. (I have mine set friends only, as well, and had someone test it out. Even if she tagged herself in one of my photos, her friends could not see it. Even if she "shared" a photo of mine, her friends could not see it. The only way was if she downloaded a pic of mine, saved it & reposted it) (except, I guess if you are worried that certain friends might do that to you, save/repost your pics so that this man can see them, then you might need to take extra steps....but other than that you should be fine) :grouphug: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaxMom Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Well, I assume you have locked down your account so that only actual friends (not friends of friends and so forth) can see your stuff? And, if you just outright block him, he can't see your comments on mutual friends' pages, etc., unless he creates an entirely fictitious account and re-friends people through that... But I would think friend requests that say "shhhhh, it's me. I'm in disguise!" would totally set of people's nut-job detector. Right? :grouphug: I'm sorry you're going through this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homefront Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 FB lets you create groups of friends and then lets you post only to picked groups. If you have a safe group start only posting to them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CupOCoffee Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 FB lets you create groups of friends and then lets you post only to picked groups. If you have a safe group start only posting to them. This. Works great. Sorry this pain keeps coming up for you :grouphug: ~coffee~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheTwinsMom1 Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Easiest way is to just block him completely, then he can not even bring up your facebook page or anything about you. It simply gives an error that the page does not exist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simka2 Posted April 26, 2012 Author Share Posted April 26, 2012 Yes, I went ahead and did this this morning. The reason I had not done it before was that I had a lot of dupliciate people in my life connected to him. Monitoring the mutual friends allowed me to see who he had recruited as spies. I know sounds crazy, but people will do things for their "pastor" that they normally would not. Especially, if they think they are protecting him from the enemy (me :tongue_smilie:). Now, it is clear that I have someone in the role and he is more than happy to oblige, afterall he could have just blocked me..like his wife did. Ugh! This thing is so nasty! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaxMom Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 It's very difficult to out maneuver the determinedly crazy. Sigh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elegantlion Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Yes, I went ahead and did this this morning. The reason I had not done it before was that I had a lot of dupliciate people in my life connected to him. Monitoring the mutual friends allowed me to see who he had recruited as spies. I know sounds crazy, but people will do things for their "pastor" that they normally would not. Especially, if they think they are protecting him from the enemy (me :tongue_smilie:). Now, it is clear that I have someone in the role and he is more than happy to oblige, afterall he could have just blocked me..like his wife did. Ugh! This thing is so nasty! :grouphug::grouphug::grouphug: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QuirkyKapers Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 :grouphug: I'm sorry. That sounds really stressful. I am glad you found a way to block him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KS_ Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 Even if you have mutual friends, you can type in his name and Block him. Then he will never be able to see any of your stuff, at all, nor you, his. I have a person blocked who is friends with people on my friends list. He cannot see anything, even if I comment to a mutual friend. It's actually funny at times, because I can watch my friends seemingly talk to themselves and know it must mean that he commented, but as I have him blocked, I can't see his side of the conversation. I assume it does the same to him when I comment to those friends. You do not need to rearrange anything or change your FB. Just set all your stuff to "friends only" so that friends of friends can't see it, block this person just in case, and you are fine. (I have mine set friends only, as well, and had someone test it out. Even if she tagged herself in one of my photos, her friends could not see it. Even if she "shared" a photo of mine, her friends could not see it. The only way was if she downloaded a pic of mine, saved it & reposted it) (except, I guess if you are worried that certain friends might do that to you, save/repost your pics so that this man can see them, then you might need to take extra steps....but other than that you should be fine) :grouphug: I agree, just make sure your privacy/security settings are locked down and change things like people tagging you in photos to "Only Me" as who can see them. Dh did that on his account, and I never saw any of the photos that people tagged - only those that some posted w/o tagging. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starr Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 I am so sorry this guy continues to go after you and that people follow him. I can't imagine how much pain it causes. :grouphug: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QueenCat Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 :grouphug: Simka, it is so hard to understand how someone can be in his position and behave in such a way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justamouse Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 :grouphug::grouphug: I am so sorry this happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happi duck Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 :grouphug::grouphug::grouphug: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avila Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 :grouphug: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
applethyme Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 :grouphug: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mommybee Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 :grouphug: I agree with what everyone said about blocking and changing all your privacy settings. The only thing I always worry about my own page is that my friends could log in while hanging with other people I didn't accept and they would see my page that way. It doesn't give them access to talk with me but how do we really make sure no one but our friends can see our pages. I just don't think we can. That's just a little something that has bothered me lately....... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Photo Ninja Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 I'm so sorry you have to deal with this. We went through a horrible situation leaving a church with a controlling, lying, manipulative pastor and it was hard enough just handling people and identifying the pastor's spies. I'm grateful we didn't have Facebook in the mix. :grouphug: You will come out the other side eventually and life will get easier. it is so hard to understand how someone can be in his position and behave in such a way. That's one reason some people can get away with it. Many people blindly trust because of a person's position or title instead of looking at character and behavior. Some people are blind to it or choose to believe the lies, others are gullible and believe whatever they are told, others see what is going on, but don't want it to be true so they assume they must be the problem and must simply not understand, and others want to be liked or appreciated, so they choose not to see. Others see the truth but don't want to be treated like people who have confronted the person/situation, so they keep quiet out of fear. Many of those people are easily used by a controlling, manipulative person, and often the people don't realize they are being used as spies. They think they are helping and doing the right thing. That makes it hard for people trying to escape and move on who want to maintain their friendships. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgiana Daniels Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 There's certainly no shortage of nutty people out there. Sorry you have to deal with a creeper :grouphug: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
love2read Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 So sorry you have to go through this. If you can stay off of facebook and other online place where you will be recognized, he will eventually forget to stalk you. People like that usually get board when there is no drama and your friends(?) will eventually forget to report activity to him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simka2 Posted April 27, 2012 Author Share Posted April 27, 2012 :grouphug: I agree with what everyone said about blocking and changing all your privacy settings. The only thing I always worry about my own page is that my friends could log in while hanging with other people I didn't accept and they would see my page that way. It doesn't give them access to talk with me but how do we really make sure no one but our friends can see our pages. I just don't think we can. That's just a little something that has bothered me lately....... Yes, this is something I have thought about as well. It is troubling. I am often at war within myself. Part of the problem lies in how much I am willing to share IRL (so to speak) You see we started as the children's pastors, then absorbed the youth dept, and finally absorbed everthing young adult and down. I have "kids" (now in their late teens early twenties) who want to be FB friends. I love them dearly and cherish the time spent as a Pastor's wife in their lives. Thankfully, they were young enough or fringe enough to not have been drastically affected by what happened. Basically, I do not feel it is for them to carry all the gorey details. OTOH, I now this man. I know that he did not give a second thought to using direct family members and casual aquaintances to keep tabs on me and dh. They (the fb kids) are from a culture that for the most part loves to have a ton of FB friends, and I need to be cautious. I just feel torn. It turns out FB has some better security features than when I went through a similar episode last year. At that time the only way I knew to protect myself was to make sure we did not have mutual friends. Thanks, everyone for the support. I am a little shook up, but having a long drive home from vacation really helped me sort my emotions. I do not want this person to have power over me, but I am also not as angry as I once was. I just want to feel safe and move on with my life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellesmere Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 Yes, this is something I have thought about as well. It is troubling. I am often at war within myself. Part of the problem lies in how much I am willing to share IRL (so to speak) You see we started as the children's pastors, then absorbed the youth dept, and finally absorbed everthing young adult and down. I have "kids" (now in their late teens early twenties) who want to be FB friends. I love them dearly and cherish the time spent as a Pastor's wife in their lives. Thankfully, they were young enough or fringe enough to not have been drastically affected by what happened. Basically, I do not feel it is for them to carry all the gorey details. OTOH, I now this man. I know that he did not give a second thought to using direct family members and casual aquaintances to keep tabs on me and dh. They (the fb kids) are from a culture that for the most part loves to have a ton of FB friends, and I need to be cautious. I just feel torn. It turns out FB has some better security features than when I went through a similar episode last year. At that time the only way I knew to protect myself was to make sure we did not have mutual friends. Thanks, everyone for the support. I am a little shook up, but having a long drive home from vacation really helped me sort my emotions. I do not want this person to have power over me, but I am also not as angry as I once was. I just want to feel safe and move on with my life. :grouphug: I was conflicted about having a number of young people on my friends list. Even when FB started to let you sort people and hide things or silence them in the news feed, it got hard and confusing since we were also finding out some weren't as trustworthy as we had hoped. We were not going through anything like your situation but we left a controlling, manipulative group and had a lot of privacy issues. Yet, we didn't want to cut off "kids" that had no idea and nothing to do with why we left. The privacy features are better now, but even after blocking people, I found it might still be possible for the blocked person to know that I was on FB even though they cannot search for me or send any requests/messages. So sorry this continues to be a problem, but glad you are sorting things out a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThisIsTheDay Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 They (the fb kids) are from a culture that for the most part loves to have a ton of FB friends, and I need to be cautious. I just feel torn. What if you kept your current account but then had a separate, more private FB account for people who are family and otherwise completely unrelated to anyone at your old church? You could still check in with the first account and be in touch with those people. You could move certain people over to the new account (they'd have to do this knowingly, but you could friend them with the new account and then delete them off the old account). You'd have your privacy and freedom on the new account without worry. Each FB account can only have one main email, so you'd have to have a second email. (But you could change the current account to a newer email that you might not check as frequently, and then open the new FB account with your preferred email.) Clear as mud? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simka2 Posted April 27, 2012 Author Share Posted April 27, 2012 What if you kept your current account but then had a separate, more private FB account for people who are family and otherwise completely unrelated to anyone at your old church? You could still check in with the first account and be in touch with those people. You could move certain people over to the new account (they'd have to do this knowingly, but you could friend them with the new account and then delete them off the old account). You'd have your privacy and freedom on the new account without worry. Each FB account can only have one main email, so you'd have to have a second email. (But you could change the current account to a newer email that you might not check as frequently, and then open the new FB account with your preferred email.) Clear as mud? Thank you! This is my plan B if I still feel uncomfortable, after I block all the people I need to. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandragood1 Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 I know of a college prof who has two FB accounts. One account under her name, which her students can use (and maybe co-workers?) and a separate account under a fictitious name that is for friends. The only snag is monitoring two accounts. I was really surprised when I got a Friend-Request from someone I had never heard of - I had to ask another mutual friend about it. Sandra Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.