Facebook is a great place to connect with friends. But when we allow strangers into our digital lives by accepting their friend requests, it can become a darker, more dangerous place.
Okay, while those phantom “don’t add this person because he is a hacker who will wipe your computer” type rumours are a load of nonsense, that doesn’t mean adding anyone into your Facebook circle is a wise move. Here are 5 reasons why accepting strangers on Facebook is never a good idea.
Adding people you don’t know on Facebook gives them access to the information you post, including information about yourself. You may think the posts and photos you upload to Facebook are useless to cyber crooks, but you’d be surprised what professional identity thieves can glean from your account and how they can use that seemingly innocent information against you.
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For example, photos can reveal where you live. Your birthday reveals your date of birth. Adding someone as a friend on Facebook can potentially reveal information such as your friends, where you work, where you go on holiday, where you went to school, names of family members and even your contact information, depending on what data you choose to share with Facebook.
Your Facebook account is a goldmine for identity thieves, who can accumulate that information and pretend to be you online. So don’t give strangers access to that information in the first place.
You can imagine your circle of Facebook friends as a chain that it is only as strong as its weakest link. Accepting a stranger as a friend on Facebook gives them access to your information as we pointed out above, but it also gives them access to certain information about your friends as well. For example a stranger can see photos or check-ins that you and your friends are tagged in, or posts that your friends make on your timeline.
Because you let that stranger into your circle of friends, they can see anything your friends are tagged in that you are also tagged in, so don’t be the weakest link in your chain!
Accepting a friend request from a stranger on Facebook gives them a number of ways to contact you on the social network, including being able to post on your timeline or message you on Messenger. And if that stranger happens to be a scammer, they can now send you malicious links that could lead to malware-laden websites of phishing websites. Or they could be a romance scammer looking to gain your trust to trick you into sending money or release sensitive information about yourself.
Or worse, it could be someone looking to lure you into meeting up in real life, where a variety of very serious crimes could potentially take place. It’s just easier and safer not to put yourself in that position.
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A would-be thief would love to know when your house is empty and vulnerable and many of us willingly broadcast that information on our Facebook timelines with holiday snaps, check-ins or posts.
Even if you don’t, there is a good chance that the people you are with might and tag you in a post, and it all shows up on your timeline.
When accepting a stranger as a friend on Facebook, it may be because they want to clone your account. This means creating a new account but using the information you have on your account, so it looks like a duplicate.
Crooks can potentially duplicate your account without being your friend because they can already see your profile picture, cover photo and name, but having access to more information about you means they can add more information to their cloned account, making it more believable. Since they are now your friend, they can see who you are friends with too, either by looking at your friend list (if it’s visible) or simply looking at your posts and who you are tagged with in photos or other posts. They can then direct friend requests to your friends.
Crooks can then use their cloned account masquerading as you to trick other Facebook users into accepting friend requests, and from there, any number of scams could take place as the crook pretends to be you to your friends.