We explain why hiding your friends list on Facebook is so important and how to do it.

Facebook has tons of different privacy settings, and there are some that default to public when they really shouldn’t be. When a particular piece of your information is public, it means that anyone with a Facebook account can see it.

Your Facebook friends list is one of those things that always defaults to public, and it’s important that you change that.

First, why should I change my Facebook friends list to private?

Because it gives cyber criminals some information about you – namely, who you’re friends with. And they can use that to their advantage.

One popular scam that relies on knowing your friends list is the Facebook cloning scam. This is when a crook clones your Facebook account. There is no cyber trickery (a.k.a. “hacking”) needed to do this.

All the crook needs to do is create a brand new Facebook account using your name and profile picture, both of which they can grab from your account since both are public and there’s nothing you can do about that. Since the account uses your name and profile picture, it looks like it’s your account. The crook then sends friend requests to your friends using your public friends list in a bid to trick your friends into accept the request.

Once accepted, the crook pretends to be you, in order to deceive your friends. Usually the crook attempts to trick your friends into sending them money or disclosing sensitive information.

How?

There are many possible variants of this scam, but the “friend in crisis” scam has always been persistently popular. This is where the crook – posing as you – claims to be stuck abroad without money after some type of emergency and urges the friend to wire money through.

The friend, thinking it’s you, obliges. Of course, it’s not you. It’s a crook posing as you with a cloned account.

Of course, if your friends list is private, the crook doesn’t know your friends. So when they create the cloned account, they wouldn’t know who to send friend requests to.

How do I hide my friends list then?

Now you know why, it’s important to know how.

If you’re using Facebook on the desktop, head to your own profile, click friends and click the pencil icon at the top right of the page and select Edit Privacy and change the setting to Only Me. See screenshot below.

If you’re using a mobile app, click on the three-lined settings icon, scroll to Settings & Privacy, then Settings, then scroll to Privacy Settings and finally scroll to the option about who can see your friends list. Again we recommend setting it to Only Me.

Now your friends list is hidden. Crooks are less likely to try and clone your account because they can’t see who you’re friends with, and thus don’t know who to send their fraudulent friend requests to. Simple!