5 Facebook friends who put your privacy at risk

Facebook friends comes in all shapes and sizes, and some of them can be more privacy conscious than others.

But privacy-unaware friends not only put themselves at risk, they can put their friends at risk too. Here we outline 5 different type of Facebook user who you should be wary of if they’re in your friends list.

The “I’m going to get my account compromised” friend.

Whether it’s through a phishing scam, a malware infection, a rogue Facebook app or any other type of online scam, there is no shortage of ways a Facebook user can end up getting their account compromised, resulting in handing over access to a total stranger.

This isn’t just a problem for the Facebook user who compromised their account. It can also affect their Facebook friends too – i.e. you.

This is because this stranger can now see all of your “friends only” information that was available to your friend, like your personal photos, your personal information that you’ve set to “friends only”, as well as your posts.

There are a number of ways a stranger can use this information against you. It could spark an identity theft scam, for example. Or even a targeted phishing attack against you where the scammer masquerades as your friend who got their account compromised.

Your Facebook friends list is like a chain. And if one part of that chain gets compromised, it puts you all at risk.

The “I’m going to tag you and check you in at every available opportunity” friend

We all have those friends who like to tag us in hundreds of photos and tag us in every location we go to with them. But many consider it poor etiquette when using the ‘Check In’ or Tag features without permission.

This is because there are many situations where you may not want people to know where you are all of the time, nor do you want this information broadcast to people that you do not know, which it would be since the ‘check-in’ is visible to anyone on the friends list of the person who published it.

You can limit the visibility of tags in your privacy settings, and you can also enable timeline review so it doesn’t appear in on your own timeline without your permission, but these are not ideal solutions.

The “I’m going to take pictures of you all the time and post them to my privacy-lacking account” friend

We all take photos from time to time, but we probably all know that friend who seems more focused on taking as many photos as humanly possible instead of having a good time doing whatever they’re doing.

And more often than not, it is these friends who often find themselves lacking in the privacy settings department. Whenever someone uploads and tags a photo of you, and that person doesn’t have the recommended “friends only” level of privacy enabled, instead using the public setting, then anyone who browses to your timeline can see those photos, even complete strangers.

In which case the onus is shifted to you to either persuade your photo-happy friend to change their privacy settings, or untag yourself from the slew of public photos being uploaded. And we all have better things to be doing than that.

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The “I make my friends list public” friend

This is one where most people are probably still guilty of, since Facebook does not hide he friends list by default, rather you have to actually hide it yourself.

It isn’t a good idea to allow anyone to navigate to your timeline and see your list of friends. This is because it gives scammers a potential “in” by trying to trick your friends into accepting them as a friend by pretending to be you. They do this by creating an account under your name, using your profile picture and cover photo (all public information that cannot be hidden) and sending out friend requests to people on your friends list.

It is called Facebook Cloning, and it is a popular scam that can lead to a variety of other scams should your friends fall for it and accept the cloned Facebook request.

The “I will accept any friend request” friend

The problem with having a friend who will accept anyone else as a friend is that they are inviting potentially dangerous people into your extended circle of friends.

Whilst a friend of a friend doesn’t have access to your correctly locked down Facebook account, they do still have access to posts you share on that friends timeline, and they also have access to content that that friend opts to post onto their own account including photos, tags and check-ins involving you.

In some cases, this can be enough to put you at some degree of risk as well. It also makes you susceptible to an attempted cloning attack as we discussed above, even if the friend-request-happy friend has their friends list private.

For further reading, also check out…

4 types of Facebook friend who put you at risk.
How to lock down your Facebook account.