Widows & Widowers Support Group
This community is dedicated to those who have lost a husband, wife, or partner. Anything is open for discussion here, with the hope that we can focus on grief, bereavement, life after loss, and continuing on after a great loss.
Sorry unless you have profile information I will not add you as a friend. I have had too many bogus requests to know if you are sincere. Thanks, Wendy
Every page has a "report abuse" link on it. When you get those spammer/scammer/predator type e-mails, please do not just delete them. Please report them to DS by using the report abuse function. DS will then take a look at it and ban them, delete their account, and block their e-mail address. We do get a bunch of them - they are not generally personally and specifically directed to you - they send out hundreds or thousands of e-mails, so yes I used to get the ones from supposedly young women looking for love (I am a 53-year old woman). They also send them across many groups - the same messages we get here in W&W will be received by others elsewhere on DS. So if you report them, you are not only helping your friends here, but you may be helping to protect a more vulnerable DS member elsewhere.
Your Profile settings: It's not all or nothing - I use the middle option. I keep mine set to "DS Members Only." That way, anyone on here legitimately can see what my situation is, but not just someone passing through - including search engines and such. If someone's profile is set to "private" and they send me a friend request, I can wait for a couple of weeks to see what else they post or send them a message and ask them who they are and why they sent me the request.
The Chat function: You need to set your account settings regarding chat to "Friends only." There are folks out there who come onto DS and simply search to see if anyone - regardless of group membership - is on. With a friends only setting, you won't get those chat attempts out of the blue. You can copy comments from the chat window and send them to DS using the report abuse function, so if you do get creepy chat messages, please report them as well.
My journals and my photos are set to "friends only." This protects me and my family. I also don't ever use my kids' names, and I am careful about how much specific identifying info I put on here or share. I try to be prudent, but reasonably so.
I hope this helps. Love and Hugs, Martha
Thanks for the reminder about Google and search engines. I had forgotten that whole issue about the search engines being able to pull up our profiles if we marked "Who Can See My Profile" as "Everyone." I changed my privacy allowances in My Account many months ago to "DS Members" to alleviate the problem but still giving DS members the chance to view it.
I appreciate your input and wanted to correct the info that I gave on this thread. As always, your comments are loaded with helpful information. You're a jewel. TJ