Question from Curtis: I have a quick question for you.
I followed your instructions to see who is following me on Facebook and I saw that I indeed have a bunch of followers.
When I click on their names to look at their profiles I can only see the info on some of them. The other profiles have a message that says:
DO YOU KNOW [XXXXXX]?
To see what he/she shares with friends, send him/her a friend request.
I’m confused. If they’re following me shouldn’t I be able to see the stuff on their profile?
Also, do you recommend that I block those people just in case their profiles are infected with a virus or something?
Rick’s answer: Curtis, the “Followers” that are hiding their info from you have their profiles set to “Friends”.
That means you won’t be able to see their “About” info or the posts on their Timelines even though they are following you.
Why? Because even though those people are following you, they are not friends with you. Therefore their info is hidden from your view in accordance with their accounts’ privacy settings.
I know that probably seems unfair but that’s just the way Facebook works.
As far as blocking them is concerned, that would obviously prevent them from following you.
However, there’s really no reason to prevent them from seeing the info on YOUR profile unless you decide that you don’t want strangers seeing your info either, in which case you probably wouldn’t want ANY strangers seeing your info even if you can see theirs.
And just to ease your mind about it, viruses aren’t the reason those folks’ info is hidden from you.
As I explained above, it’s simply that they’ve made the decision to hide their info from everyone except the people on their Friends List by selecting that option in the settings.
I hope this helps, Curtis. Good luck!
Update from Curtis: Ok thanks. I don’t really like the idea of people seeing my info when I can’t see theirs.
Is there an easy way to block the followers who are hiding their info but allow the others to keep following me?
Rick’s reply: I’m afraid you’ll have to block all of those “shy” followers individually, Curtis. There’s no setting that will block them all in one fell swoop.
The only way to prevent those folks from following you without taking the time to block them all is to change your privacy settings to not allow people to follow you at all. This post explains how to do that should you ultimately decide to go that route.
Bonus tip: This post explains how to avoid the ‘Why are all these strangers following me?’ hoax on Facebook.
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