Finding yourself on Facebook

In the Facebook world you can find many people all around the world with the same name as you. You can also set up groups, pages and more on the site on just about anything and under just about any name. The Daily Post reporter Imogen Crispe finds out how many aliases some have.

 

Rotorua National MP Todd McClay has discovered and made friends with three other Todd McClays, whose names are spelled identically.

He came across his namesakes when looking for family members and added some, and some added him, as friends.

"It just goes to show my name is nowhere near as unique as my parents told me."

Mr McClay said one Todd McClay was a similar age with a similar birthday.

He thought he was probably related to some of his namesakes.

"We have to go back a long way to see how we would be related."

He got in touch with a Todd McClay from America and the two Todds exchanged details about their lives, children and became almost like pen friends.

"We tried to work out if we had any family we could link together."

Mr McClay said Facebook was a great tool.

"Facebook is an amazing way to find people you want to contact or people you don't know, or in this one build a relationship by something you have in common."

Mr McClay, who has more than 2300 friends, said he regularly gets friend requests.

"I find when doing a speech I get a hit of people wanting to be friends."

He said more often than not he accepts the requests but he takes care to look at the profiles first.

"I look at profiles, if we have friends in common I'm more likely to accept them.

"I think it's wise to be a bit cautious around that."

Mr McClay said another reason to be careful using social media is that people can use others' names to make profiles or hijack accounts.

He had come across Rotorua people who had had these problems.

"Once a profile is set up it is unbelievably difficult to change it.

"It really is a reminder to think about security on social media and whether rules are sufficient around proving identity."