By Jason Spidle
Facebook provides a full range of privacy tools that enable you to control who can see your profile, pictures and status updates. With these privacy tools, you can completely hide your profile from other users on Facebook. Depending on your needs, you can either hide your profile from specific users or you can configure your profile to be invisible to everyone except friends or friends of friends. On the other hand, if you only want to hide your profile when you are signed out, you can do so by deactivating your account.
Navigate to Facebook and sign in to your account.
Click the arrow to the right of the "Home" menu and select "Privacy Settings" from the drop-down menu.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Manage Blocking" in the Blocked People and Apps section.
Type the name or email of the user you want to hide your profile from in the "Block Users" section and then click "Block. " If you are blocking a user by name, you may be presented with a list of users with that name from which you will need to press the "Block" button beside the specific user you want to block.
Navigate to Facebook and sign in to your account.
Click the arrow next to the "Home" menu and select "Privacy Settings" from the drop-down menu.
Click "Edit Settings" in the "How You Connect" section.
Click the "Who can look up your profile by name or contact info?" drop-down menu and select "Friends of Friends" or "Friends" to limit the people who can view your Facebook profile. This hides your profile from being visible in public searches on Facebook or from search engines like Google.
Click "Done" to save your settings.
Navigate to Facebook and sign in to your account.
Click the arrow to the right of the "Home" menu and select "Account Settings" from the drop-down menu.
Select the "Security" tab and then click "Deactivate Your Account."
Select "This is temporary, I'll be back" and then click "Confirm."
Enter your Facebook password and then click "Deactivate Now." You will be signed out of Facebook and your profile is hidden from everyone on Facebook. Reactivate your account by signing in as usual from the Facebook home page.
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Writer Bio
Jason Spidle is a technology enthusiast and writer. His writing on computers, smartphones, Web design, Internet applications, sports and music has been published at a variety of websites including Salon, JunkMedia, Killed in Cars and The Columbia Free Times.
Spidle maintains a number of blogs featuring poetry, short stories and other fiction.
By default, your Facebook profile information, posts, and even your friends are available for all to see. It's often convenient for your friends list to be public, because it can help people find and connect with you.
If you prefer, you can restrict who can see your entire friends list using Facebook's privacy settings. You might not want everyone to see it, especially if you want to mask the identity of some friends from others.
Or perhaps you just value your privacy and don't want everyone to know who you're connected to online.
Here's how to hide your friends list on Facebook.
How to hide your friends on Facebook via web browser1. Open Facebook in a web browser.
2. Click your profile picture in the top right corner.
3. In the dropdown menu, click Settings & privacy.
4. Click Settings.
Go to your Facebook account’s settings. Stefan Ionescu/Insider5. In the left side menu, click Privacy.
6. In the section called How people can find and contact you, click Edit next to Who can see your friends list?
7.
Click the dropdown to reveal a list of options. You can choose: Public, Friends, Friends except, Specific friends, Only me, or Custom.
Quick tip: If you click Custom, you can choose to enter specific names. For example, you can share your friends list with all of your friends except for Bob Smith. After adding a specific person, click Save Changes.
How to hide your friends on Facebook via a mobile device1.
Open the Facebook app on your iPhone or Android device.
2. Tap the three horizontal lines (this is the hamburger menu). On an iPhone, this is in the bottom right corner of the screen; on an Android, it's in the top right corner.
Tap the hamburger menu in the Facebook app. Stefan Ionescu/Insider3. Tap Settings & Privacy.
4. Tap Settings in the dropdown menu.
Tap “Settings.” Stefan Ionescu/Insider5.
In the Audience and visibility section, tap How people can find and contact you.
6. Tap Who can see your friends list?
7. Choose who you want to be able to see your friends list. You can choose: Public, Friends, Friends except, Specific friends, or Only me.
Quick tip: If you choose Friends except, you can block specific people from seeing your friends list.
Dave Johnson
Freelance Writer
Dave Johnson is a technology journalist who writes about consumer tech and how the industry is transforming the speculative world of science fiction into modern-day real life.
Dave grew up in New Jersey before entering the Air Force to operate satellites, teach space operations, and do space launch planning. He then spent eight years as a content lead on the Windows team at Microsoft. As a photographer, Dave has photographed wolves in their natural environment; he's also a scuba instructor and co-host of several podcasts. Dave is the author of more than two dozen books and has contributed to many sites and publications including CNET, Forbes, PC World, How To Geek, and Insider.
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It is possible to make a private profile on Facebook through the privacy settings. Specify settings for all or an individual user.
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To remove information about their page, the page owner can set privacy for each post individually.
Or use general settings, hiding not only from visitors, but also from search engines.
Ways to make a page private:
The last option can also be configured using Publication Accessibility. The profile owner can restrict the viewing of their entries by indicating: "Only I see." Or, limit the audience to which new posts will be available.
It is possible to close your Facebook profile from outsiders from the computer version if you go to the section: "Settings" - Privacy. The user is offered a basic list of options that affect the presentation of the page in the social network. nine0003
To see the current privacy settings and how the page is displayed for subscribers, guests:
Shown from an account visitor who has not yet subscribed or sent a friend request.
How to restrict access to the page on Facebook:
The social network has separate privacy settings located in the Quick Settings. But making the account completely closed will not work: the user will have to delete all data or hide information from the main block.
You can also set privacy settings for one person. Facebook offers two features: restricted list or blocking. The second option is suitable if the account owner does not want to see the specified person in the list of friends. Restrictions affect the ability to view publications, Stories.
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In the privacy settings, you can restrict viewing to a certain circle of subscribers who leave reviews or frequently visit the account.
Block browsing:
Such a subscriber will not receive notifications if there are new publications. Also will not be able to leave comments, but will see the entry if he goes to the profile. nine0003
The social network has page privacy requirements. For example, there is no “Make account private” function, and the owner can only choose options.
Features of privacy settings:
You can mark users whose posts will be added to the Feeds, and whose posts will be deleted; nine0010 The privacy policy includes interest settings. Facebook collects information about users in order to further generate advertising recommendations. nine0003
If the page owner has connected third-party services, closing the account may make the data inaccessible. For example, if the registration was made through Facebook, where the phone number or email address was taken from, the next time you log in, you will need to confirm this information.
How to continue using:
Do the same with the e-mail address.
Or, the profile owner can disable all active services connected to Facebook:
All registration data will be deleted from the specified site or application, including actions and changes made by the user. nine0003
Facebook is an excellent online platform where people meet, communicate, start business and even personal relationships. However, for a considerable number of people, the degree of openness and transparency that Facebook offers to its users is not an easy test. After all, these people value privacy very much.
Therefore, we will analyze how to protect your account from unwanted interest, and how to make sure that information about one user does not become public domain.
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There are no so-called "private profiles" in Facebook, when information about the user is available only to him. However, this does not mean at all that the social network toolkit does not contain the components necessary to protect information. Each user is able, using individual settings, to determine the degree of accessibility of the information contained in his profile. nine0003
Facebook's privacy settings are responsible for this segment. This is a very extensive section in the settings menu. In addition, users should be aware that the social network offers them to choose the privacy settings for the published content.
When placing a post or any information, the user can see icons in the form of a padlock, a silhouette or a globe next to the field to be filled. They are the regulation of the degree of confidentiality of information and content posted on the social network. What is not for prying eyes should be marked with a padlock, since this level of confidentiality means that the publication is completely closed to everyone except the account owner.
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In the desktop version of Facebook, you can close access to your personal profile in the following way:
If there is a desire that any information in the Facebook profile should not be available to outsiders at all, and if privacy settings apply to it, then you can safely use the "Only me" option.
Allow only some friends: if there is something that can only be accessed by some friends, then you can allow access to them using the "Specific Friends" access.
Exclude only some: there is an option "Friends except", which, if desired, allows you to filter access to users who are in the list of friends.
Important! Every Facebook user should know how to check the availability of personal information that he entrusts to the social network.
To do this:
In particular, if you don't want everyone to know where you work, remove the default globe icon in the Work and Education section.
Select, for example, "Friends only". The same is desirable to do with the email address and phone number.
Using a social network using a mobile device, you can hide information that is not supposed to be available, so to speak, to the general public.
What you need to do:
The lower part of the section is given for options that are responsible for the degree of confidentiality of publications, subscriptions and stories. In the same place, if necessary, you can configure accessibility levels. nine0003
As you know, a page is a kind of Facebook account that is available to all users. Therefore, the page cannot be closed.
But certain actions can be taken to regulate the degree of confidentiality.
This is done in the following way: If an unwanted publication appears on the page, you need to click on the name of its author, then on the ellipsis and click "Deny access to the page."
To introduce these restrictions, you need to:
If you need to enter a restriction for users of a certain age, then in the "General" section there is a subsection "Age restrictions".
Facebook groups can also set different levels of accessibility for users who are not members of these communities. By this parameter, groups are divided into:
Group privacy settings on Facebook have some specifics: you can only change the group's privacy level once every 28 days. If the group has less than 5 thousand members, there are no problems with group status changes.