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Have you noticed receiving friend requests on Facebook from people that are already your friends? Are you worried that your Facebook account can be copied by scammers?

Below is some information on how to deter scammers from copying your account.

Your Facebook account is not hacked when someone copies it. This is what is known as cloning. Scammers copy your photos and name and create an account to gain access to your friend list. Once they have done that and added all of your friends, hence gaining access to their personal information, they block you so that you are not able to find them. To prevent this be sure to never accept friend requests from people you don’t know and people that are already your friends. Doing so you are giving a stranger access to your information and your friends information. Truth is, if someone took you out as a friend and they try to add you again you shouldn’t accept them anyway 🙂

Scammers copy accounts for a number of different reasons.

• To gain access to your and your friends personal information
• To get a larger audience for something they might be selling or
• To con your friends into donating or giving them money as your friends will think it is you.

Here are some key points in deterring scammers from copying or cloning your account:

• Make sure your friend list privacy is set to “ONLY ME” – if scammers can not access your friend list they will move to the next person.
• Make sure all your posts are set to “FRIENDS ONLY” – although we may be proud of something we post and we want the world to see it, if your posts are set to anything other then that such as “FRIENDS OF FRIENDS” or “PUBLIC” scammers can access your friend list by the likes and comments below the posts.
• The current cover photo is the only one that is always public and the privacy can not be changed on it so be sure if you must have a cover photo (which I would suggest you don’t) to hide it from your timeline. Also be sure to change the privacy of all your old cover photos as the default for cover photos is always “PUBLIC.”
• NEVER EVER accept friend requests from someone you do not know or someone that is already your friend.

To view what your timeline looks like to people that are not your friends go to the right bottom side of your cover photo and click the 3 dots that look like this “…” then click “View As”. NOTE: This can only be done on a desktop and not on mobile devices.

It’s just as simple as this “If scammers can get access to your information they will copy your account.” So don’t give it to them!!!!!

NOTE: If your account has already been copied or cloned you are probably still friends with the fake account of the person that did it. Be sure to go through your friend list.