Could Your Facebook Friends Affect Your Credit Score?

If Facebook's total lack of respect for your privacy (note: there's really no such thing as 'online privacy') doesn't bother you, or studies about how Facebook leads to depression doesn't either, then maybe this will.

Apparently, now your Facebook friends can affect your credit.

There are a handful of new companies that are analyzing your Facebook friends to determine whether or not you're a safe bet for credit. If you have friends who are delinquent on loans or default on loans, it reflects badly on you.

For now, it doesn't look like there's any connection between your Facebook friends and your FICO score. So being friends with a bunch of bad credit risks won't drop you from, say, a 750 down to a 610.

But there's no reason to think a company would only consider your FICO score for a loan in the future. If they can get a better picture of you by looking at a second credit score, based on your Facebook friends, why wouldn't they?