You know, cyberstalking is a freaky thing. I guess I’m guilty of it to an extent by virtue of my “snoopyness” but really, once the tables were reversed, I got a little—how shall we say—disturbed?

Last Sunday after a leisurely stroll, my best friend, husband and I stopped for some Italian ice and yogurt at a local ice creamery. We were all mindlessly lapping up our ices when I got a text. It was from a girl I knew in high school with whom I’ve recently re-connected with on Facebook and with whom I just exchanged phone numbers. Her text stated: “I saw your (insert his proper name here) husband today at the Starbucks on Fullerton.” An innocuous text at first glance but then I realized, she’s never met my husband and how does she know his name!

Following various text messages back and forth including one in which she informed me that she didn’t recognize him without his usual five o’clock shadow, both he and I were sufficiently scared. Apparently, now, who needs face to face meetings anymore when you have Facebook?

This cyberstalking is a little disconcerting to say the least. Now, once you’re friends with someone, you get full access to what they’re doing when and with whom and you get to see evidence of it through their photos. At a time when it seems that everyone is so concerned about internet privacy and limiting access to their Facebook accounts only to those we trust—maybe the real fear or concern should be whether or not we can really trust the ones we so-call friends?

Let's be clear on something: not all cyberstalking is bad. Take for example my friend who is newly single and ready to mingle. If she didn't have the arsenal of Google and her potential dinner date's full name, she might accidentally sit down for a meal with an ax murderer or some three headed monster. That wouldn't be good, now would it? It also allows this friend to do some due diligence snooping and try to determine if the praises he's been singing about himself are actually true. The real, deeper issue for me is what about being cyberstalked for no apparently justified end? 

What if the person cyberstalking you is doing it just because she can and just because she's bored? She can, of course, because you've approved her as a "friend." However, how many of the people we’re friends with on Facebook are actually not our friends at all or we never even see them in the course of a year, two years, ten years? And how many of those people used to be awful snots to you in high school and grammar school and now just brownnose you or worse, laud your accomplishments without truly even understanding any of them. Admittedly, it’s flattering—though it seems contrived, superficial and entirely useless.

Not that the realization of this will change anyone’s behavior or will bring about some epiphany about the true nature of the human psyche. Facebook will go on, will expand and will take over the world. Before that happens though, some of us have to learn to come to terms with being randomly recognized by strangers at the local Starbucks.