didn’t accost her on the street, but through a popular venue in cyberspace. Facebook. Sixty-eight percent of adult Americans use the online social network, according to the Pew Research Center, an established “Fact Tank,” that gathers data via polls and demographic research. While two thirds of us use Facebook, most of the remaining one-third have at least heard of it, though they are often confused by talk of “walls,” “likes,” “shares,” and “friending.”
The walls on Facebook are simply pages that fill our computer screens when we click on prompters. Each Facebook user has their own wall where they can post things such as photographs, opinions, jokes, and videos. Facebook friends are users whose pages connect to each other. They become friends when one user sends another a “friend request,” and it’s accepted, but requests can also be rejected. Most Facebook friendships stem from relationships outside of the cyberworld. They know each other most often because they are family, real-life friends or have met in school or at jobs, past or present, though many connect on the site because they are on the friends’ list of mutual Facebook friends.
“Likes” are thumbs up icons that users click on to indicate they approve of a post. “Shares” are posts that friends copy and add to their own Facebook walls by clicking the share icon. They can also type comments beneath their friends’ posts and send each other private messages.
While some users rarely log on, others spend hours interacting each day, sometimes so compulsively they post photographs of their meals. Facebook can be a friendly place where cute pet photos receive many “likes” and kind comments. It can also be an aggravating place where offensive or political posts incite verbal wars with users snarking at each other in the comments section. This often results in “unfriending.”
Facebook, which boasted a billion active users in the fall of 2012, can be a convenient place for people to connect with each other, but it can also be dangerous. Scammers go phishing there, taking on fake identities in order to steal, or in some cases molest or kill. While no one can be physically harmed in cyberspace, criminals lie in wait there, constantly contriving new ways to lure victims out into the real world where they can prey upon them.
Did Cari feel a ripple of warning when Sam requested her friendship? There was nothing overtly sinister about him. His photo showed an attractive fortyish guy with thick black hair. He wore a dark suit with a bright red tie, and he leaned toward the camera with a friendly smile of straight, white teeth. He appeared respectable enough, but it was odd that his profile said he was from Cari’s hometown. Macedonia had a population of just 240, and she knew everyone there, but she didn’t recognize him. Odder still was the fact he spelled the name of his alleged hometown wrong. Mecedonia with an “e,” rather than Macedonia with an “a.”
Most people would have hit the ignore button and rejected the guy. Cari, however, never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings. She glanced at Sam’s wall and saw that he’d posted several photographs of familiar places in Macedonia. She didn’t reject Sam’s friend request but didn’t accept it either. What if she did know Sam, maybe from a forgotten encounter years earlier? She would give him a chance to refresh her memory rather than reject him outright. Early in the morning on November 13, she sent him private message. Do I know you? She had spent the night with Dave.
In fact, she was spending several days with him because she was in the midst of a time-consuming project at work. West Corporation was so close to Dave’s apartment that Cari could have walked there if she had chosen to. By skipping the commute to and from Macedonia, she was able to shave nearly two hours off her day. Meanwhile Maxwell was happy to stay with his grandmother.
Cari’s mom and stepfather, Nancy and Mark Raney, also lived in Macedonia. They were very close to Max and promised Cari they’d make sure he got to school. She was relieved to know he was in good hands but a little bit frustrated that the work project demanded such long hours because she would have to miss his football game that week.
Max was an active kid, and his mother not only attended all of his football games, she was also there for his track tournaments, basketball and baseball games. Her supervisor had assured