How to avoid the most common Facebook scams

It may not seem like a big deal to have your birthday or your relationships on your Facebook profile. But in the wrong hands, even the most basic biographical information shared publicly can cost you.

Earlier this year, a woman in Brooklyn got a phone call. She heard her in-laws’ voices on the other end of the line, and it sounded like they were in trouble. Her husband took the phone and heard another man’s voice. “You’re not gonna call the police,” he said. “You’re not gonna tell anybody. I’ve got a gun to your mom’s head, and I’m gonna blow her brains out if you don’t do exactly what I say.”

They ended up sending $750 to the man and a few minutes later, called back to check on their in-laws. They were never in danger. The person who the couple wired money to was a fraudster.

Thanks to a wealth of voice recordings online, advanced AI can be used to clone any voice and impersonate you, the New Yorker reported. That synthetic voice can then be used for extortion, citing believable personal details available on your social media profiles to make your loved ones pay up.

Everyone has a Facebook account. Whether you're an avid user or someone who hasn't logged in for years, the platform exposes your data, potentially putting you at risk.

In the past three years, Americans lost $2.7 billion in scams from social media. But of all of the social networks, Facebook has the biggest problem: More than 62% of Facebook users encounter scams on a weekly basis. In this post, we'll call out a few things you can do to maintain a safer presence on Facebook.

Limit who can see your personal information

A solid first step to stay safe is to limit the exposure of your personal information. You can control who can see things like your phone number, your birthday, and your family or romantic relationships, reducing the odds of others accessing your information and using it for fraud, identity theft, and impersonation.

There are several steps you can take to control who can see your personal information:

• Contact: You can set your email and phone number to be visible to “Friends” or “Only Me.”some text
  • To remove your phone number, go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Personal Details > Contact and basic info. Select “Remove” in the phone number field, re-enter your password, and select “Remove Phone” to confirm. You should receive a confirmation email.
  • To remove an email address, go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Personal Details >  Contact and basic info. Select the email address you want to remove, select “Delete email address,” and then select “Delete to confirm.” Re-enter your password and then hit “Submit.”
• Location: You can set your current city and hometown to be visible to “Friends” or “Only Me. To remove these details, tap on the three dots next to either “Current city” or “Hometown,” and select “Delete Current city” or “Delete hometown.”
• Birthday: You can set your birth date and birth year to be visible to “Friends” or “Only Me.” You cannot delete this information since Facebook uses it to confirm your identity.
• Work and education: You can set your work and education information — where you’ve worked and gone to school — to be visible to “Friends” or “Only Me.” To remove these details, tap on the three dots next to any work or education experience and select “Delete.”
• Relationships: You can set your family members and relationship details to be visible to “Friends” or “Only Me.” To remove these details, tap on the three dots next to any family member’s name and select “Remove family member.”

The harder this information is to find, the harder it will be for people you don't know to use it against you.

Keep in mind there’s some information on your profile that can’t be made private. For example, anyone can see your public information — your name, profile picture, cover photo, gender, username, user ID (your account number), and your networks. Use your best judgment when posting a profile or cover photo to minimize the amount of personal details that others can ascertain, and be aware that comments and likes on public content can expose who’s close to you; review engagement on these regularly or in times of heightened concern.

Update your picture settings

Facebook fundamentally promotes sharing — it’s a feature central to any social network. On Facebook, your profile picture and cover photo settings default to public. Anyone can see these pictures, as well as their likes and comments. That information is often the most compromising; the people who like and comment on your photos are probably the people you’re closest to.

Only allowing friends to see old profile and cover photos reduces the likelihood of strangers using images of you to create deepfakes, or misusing the images or information inferred from likes and comments to triangulate more information about you — who your family members are, for example, or who you’re dating. Scammers can use that information against you or your loved ones who comment on and like your pictures.

Over the years, it’s likely you have amassed troves of tagged photos, leaving behind an enormous digital trail. Your tagged photos can unwittingly expose your friends — who scammers can then pretend to be when they reach out to scam you.

To update your picture settings:

• Photo albums and past profile photos/cover photos: Make your pictures private by setting the visibility of old photo albums and profile pictures and cover photos not currently in use to "Friends”
• Tagged photos: Review the photos you're tagged in and remove tags to reduce the amount of your content that can fall into the wrong hands

Manage friend requests and discoverability

There is very little upside — and plenty of potential downside — to not carefully screening your friend requests. As a rule of thumb, you should only accept requests from people you know and trust.

By default, everything you post, upload or comment on is viewable by all of your Facebook friends. Accepting a request from a stranger exposes all of your information to a potential scammer — from where your kids go to school to your mother’s maiden name. Scammers often create fake profiles to gather information and use it to impersonate you.

You can make it harder for people to find you in the first place by tightening up your privacy settings. There are two main vectors of discoverability. You can make it harder for people to find your profile by turning off search engine linking — meaning your Facebook account is not returned in search results for your name — and by limiting discoverability to people with whom you share mutual friends.

There are a handful of ways to control your friend request and discoverability settings:

• Friend suggestions: Limit who Facebook suggests your profile to based on your email address and phone number to “Friends of Friends”
• Search discoverability: Turn off “Search Engines Linking to Your Profile” to minimize how people can find your Facebook profile through search engines
• Friend requests: Limit who can send you friend requests to “Friends of Friends”
• Friends list visibility: Limit who can see your friends list to “Friends”

Manage message requests

Facebook doesn’t always notify you when someone tries to message you. Some messages go to a special folder called "filtered requests" in the "Message Requests" inbox. Facebook only notifies you if it thinks you know the sender; everything else is assumed to be spam.

You can opt to send certain kinds of messages to the “Message Requests” folder, including those from people who have your phone number (but aren’t your Facebook friend) and friends of friends.

Your “Message Requests” folder is a hotbed for scammers; be judicious in reading those messages. One common scam that can originate through messages is known as pig butchering, a long-term con in which perpetrators create fake online accounts with AI-generated or stolen photos. Pig butchers develop relationships — sometimes romantic in nature — with their victims over time. The term comes from the scammers' intent to "fatten up" their victims by gaining their trust and manipulating their emotions before "slaughtering" them — exploiting their vulnerabilities to convince them to send the scammers money. Pig butchering scammers target indiscriminately, but lonely, older people are especially vulnerable to them, particularly when the pig butcher scammer is posing as a credible romantic interest.

Filtering messages from people you're not connected to on Facebook allows you to focus chats on friends and Marketplace connections. It can remove spam from your main inbox and reduce your vulnerability to scam attacks.

Here’s how to send various kinds of messages to the “Message Requests” folder:

• If they have your phone number: Set the delivery of messages from people with your phone number to “Message Requests”
• If they’re a friend of a friend: Set the delivery of messages from friends of friends to “Message Requests”
• If they have no connection: Set the delivery of messages from others on Messenger or Facebook to “Message Requests”

Avoid Facebook Marketplace scams

Facebook Marketplace is a great place to offload some old clothes or pick up a new-to-you coffee table. Unfortunately, it’s also overrun with scammers. Here are just a few kinds of well-documented Marketplace scams:

• Overpayment scams: A buyer will send you more than the asking price for an item and then ask that you return the difference. That would be the right thing to do — if you weren’t dealing with a scammer. The scammer then files a chargeback so they get the full purchase price back, plus whatever extra money you sent to correct the overpayment
• Rental scams: Some scammers will create a fake listing for a property that isn’t available in an attempt to get victims to send security deposits, broker fees or other payments. Other scammers hijack real listings and request a fee from victims to view a property. Never pay money through a payment app or wire transfer before viewing a property
• Gift card scams: A seller may try to get you to pay for the items they’re advertising with an untraceable prepaid digital gift card. Once you’ve sent the gift card, the seller either blocks you or deletes their account
• Phishing scams: A scammer may try to gain access to your account by sending you a link or asking for a code. To avoid being phished, only use Facebook Messenger to communicate with buyers and sellers, don't fill our surveys, and don't click on links that take you away from Facebook and ask you to sign into other accounts

To avoid these scams — and others — follow these rules of thumb:

• If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Too-good-to-be-true offers usually involve expensive items, such as luxury clothing or accessories like jewelry or watches
• Check out a seller’s profile and reviews first. Reviews are public once a seller has five or more of them. Fake accounts are typically recently created, with zero or few friends, and have no bio
• Don't pay for anything on Facebook Marketplace with a gift card. Whenever possible, consider using a trusted service that provides receipts, like PayPal or a wire transfer. Facebook Pay offers purchase protection for some items
• Keep your communication contained to Facebook Messenger. This contains your conversation to Facebook and doesn't risk taking you to an external site where phishing attempts can happen. Keeping it on Facebook also means there's a paper trail in case you have a dispute with the seller

Disconnect apps you don’t need

Logging into other apps through Facebook is an easy way to access third party websites and services, but it’s risky. Some apps may collect and sell non-public information about you, and apps with posting permissions can send fraudulent messages pretending to be you. It also gives those websites you log into via Facebook access to your account information — things like your name, profile photo and email address.

You can review and manage the permission you’ve granted third-party apps connected to your Facebook account, and remove the ones you don’t use or trust.  Remove “Apps and Websites” in your settings.

Taking these tips into account doesn’t just strengthen the security of your Facebook account — it keeps your loved ones safe too. By understanding how scammers can exploit your personal information, you can avoid being their next victim.

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