Facebook is well known for having confusing and obscure and privacy controls. The little things do make a difference, and this is especially true when it comes to your online privacy and security.
Facebook gives users the ability to control who sees their friends list. We recommend setting this feature to ‘Only Me.’ When cyber criminals hijack a Facebook account, they often extract as much data as possible. This information can be used for identity theft , fraud and the search for more victims.
Just leaving your friends list open to ‘Friends,’ can expose all of your Facebook friends to hackers and scammers. A popular scam involves creating cloned profiles and then targeting everyone on that person’s friends list. If the scammer doesn’t know who a person is friends with, then it’s virtually impossible for them to run this socially engineered scam successfully. They go for the easy money and prey and will likely move on.
Now that we have covered the ‘Why’ – follow the instructions below to lock down your friends list from would-be scammers:
Navigate to your Timeline and click the link to your friends list. Next, click the ‘Edit’ icon located on the far right below your cover photo. Finally, click the ‘Edit Privacy’ option and set the Friend List option to “Only Me.”
