"Friends & Family" is only supposed to be used between people that you know and trust. There's no protection with it but there's no charge for the service either; you can't have it both ways unfortunately.
Someone somewhere is constantly thinking up new ways to scam people out of money. I had a "phone call" the other day saying that £749 was about to be transferred overseas from my debit card and if I hadn't made the transfer I was told to press number "1" on my phone. I just put the phone down and didn't press anything because if I had I probably would have ended up with a £749 phone call on my next phone bill.