We discuss why it’s important that you hide your Facebook friends list from prying eyes and how to do it.
When posting content from your Facebook account, it’s important to make sure your privacy settings are set to friends only to stop strangers from collecting potentially important and sensitive information about you. But there are some other important settings to get right as well, and the visibility of your Facebook friends list is one such setting.
Your friends list is, as you may have worked out, a list of all those users you’re friends with on Facebook. While on the face of it it may not appear to be particularly useful information for scammers, it can be leveraged by certain crooks to their advantage.
For instance, Facebook cloning scammers, who may want to know who your friends are if they target your account for a cloning scam.
A cloning scam is when a crook creates a new Facebook account designed to look like you. They take your name, your profile picture (both of which are visible to strangers) and any other information they can glean from your account to create an account that, upon a cursory glance, looks like you.
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With that account, they can then send friend requests to all your friends, with the aim of scamming them by pretending to be you. For example the “friend in crisis” scam.
(More on Facebook cloning scams here.)
Of course it would help if they had access to your friends list, so the scammers know who to target. As such, in this instance at least, hiding your friends list doesn’t protect your own account as much as it helps your friends by making it less likely a scammer will target them pretending to be you.
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It only takes a few clicks. If you’re using the Facebook website, head over to your profile and click Friends underneath your cover photo. Then select the three dots and select Edit Privacy. From there you can select the privacy level, with Public being the least secure option and Only Me being the preferred option.
On the Facebook app, click the three lined icon, then go down to Settings & Privacy, then Settings and then Privacy Settings and change the Who can see your friends list? option.
Note that Facebook friends may still be able to see mutual friends.
And that’s it! Your account and the accounts of your friends have just become that little more secure!