Facebook is, by default, set to make all your information public. But what if you want to keep your profile private and have more control over what other Facebook users, who aren’t your friends, can see on your profile? Is it possible to change your account’s default settings?
Unfortunately, there’s no magic switch to make your profile completely private by default. However, if you know the correct settings to tweak, you can make your profile effectively 100% confidential.
If you’ve been wondering how to make your Facebook profile private, this article walks you through the steps.
If you want to make your Facebook profile private via a browser, here’s what you should do:
Nowadays, many people only use Facebook on their phones. Fortunately, the process for those who want to make their profile private is reasonably straightforward. It is primarily the same for both iPhone and Android devices. There are two ways to change your privacy settings on the Facebook mobile app.
If you want to do a quick checkup, follow these steps:
Going through the Privacy Checkup settings makes it easy to limit what others can see. But, if you want to have more options, you can follow these steps to make more details private:
These steps allow you to make things other than your posts and contact information private. For example, the Followers and public content option lets you limit who can comment on your public posts.
What if you want to hide your Facebook profile content from those who aren’t your friends? How can you do this? Just follow the steps below.
You can also change this setting on each of your posts by tapping the three dots in the upper right-hand corner (of that post). Here, you can select who can see your status (public, friends only, private, custom, etc.).
In closing, anonymity doesn’t happen with one click, but making your Facebook profile private is relatively simple. All the options appear in the “Security and Privacy” section within “Settings.
” Just follow the steps provided in this article, and you’ll have no issues.
Here are the answers to more of your questions about Facebook privacy.
Yes, anyone can see your profile picture, even if they don’t have a Facebook account (search engine results, profile URL, etc.). When you set your profile to private, other users can still see your profile picture and a few details about your account, but they can only see posts you made “Public.”
One of the convenient features of Facebook is the ability to see what your profile looks like to others. This feature is precious when checking what information you have set to “Public,” such as posts, ‘Friends’ lists, etc. You can follow these steps to view your profile as it appears to the public:
1. Open Facebook and tap on the arrow in the upper right-hand corner.
2. Tap on the Hamburger icon(three horizontal lines) in the upper right (Android) or in the lower right (iPhone).
3. Go to your profile.
4. On your profile page, tap on the three horizontal dots to the right of Edit Profile.
5. Click or tap on View As.
Unfortunately, you cannot make your profile picture private. If you upload a photo to use as a profile picture, anyone can see it. However, you can reset your profile image to Facebook’s default photo (the silhouette of a person on a blank background). Navigate to your “Profile Picture photo album, select your current profile picture, and click on the three-dot icon to delete the image.
You can also set your profile image to something commonplace, like a favorite superhero or symbol. Be careful with copyright infringement laws, though.
You would want to keep your Facebook profile private for many reasons.
Perhaps you want to keep yourself safe online from possible identity theft, or maybe you are going for a job interview, and you don’t want the potential employer to see your social media activity. Maybe you just don’t want people poking you in 2022. Whatever the reason for going dark on Facebook, it’s a simple tweak in the privacy settings to pull the curtains down on those embarrassing photos and dirty jokes. Here’s how to make Facebook private and turn yourself into an enigma.
Read more: How to use Facebook
QUICK ANSWER
To make your Facebook profile private, go to Settings & privacy > Settings > Privacy, or click this direct link. Under Your activity, you will see an option called Limit the audience for posts you've shared with friends of friends or Public. Click the blue Limit Past Posts link and click the button that appears. All of your posts up to now will then change to the Friends privacy setting.
This step is irreversible.
JUMP TO KEY SECTIONS
Like always, it is easier to do these things on the desktop Facebook site compared to the mobile app (although we will also cover the mobile app in the next section.) First, click your avatar in the top right-hand corner of the screen and drop down the menu. Select Settings & privacy, then Settings > Privacy. Alternatively, here is a direct link.
Look at the Your activity section. The first thing to tweak is Who can see your future posts? If it says Public, then it’s time to change that. Click the blue Edit link.
Drop down the menu and select Friends. You can also choose Only me by clicking More.
The next setting is Limit The Audience for Old Posts on Your Timeline.
Click Limit Past Posts, and all posts on your timeline will instantly change to the Friends setting. Before you do this, be aware that this change is irreversible. You can still change the privacy setting on posts back to Public again, but you would have to do each one individually and manually.
It’s the same process in the mobile app, but you just have to figure out how to get there.
No, both your Facebook profile picture and the cover picture will always be visible to everyone, regardless of whether they follow you or not.
Yes, you can see how a non-Facebook friend views your profile by going to the three-dot menu at the far right of your profile page.
Select View as.
March 18, 2015, 15:00
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Social networks know much more about the habits and lives of their users than their parents or even spouses. This is not a very pleasant fact, because all this information is available not only to advertisers, but also to your competitors and enemies. In the lives of many people, there are situations when it is necessary for some time to disappear from the public space and go into the shadows. Facebook does not have a built-in ability to delete all your posts and photos, but you can hide them from prying eyes for a while. Business Insider journalists described a sequence of actions, as a result of which you can hide Facebook information, and the user's previous activity will be hidden. nine0003
In 2021, the editors of AIN.UA updated this text. 6 years after its publication, Facebook has simplified the procedure for hiding all information about yourself from Facebook and switching to "invisible mode".
In addition, there was also a function to delete posts for a certain period. In the updated material, we tell you how to do it.
Be sure to turn off the ability to find us by email address and phone number. 
Turn off the Off-Facebook Preview option. Recall that recently Facebook has seriously taken care of the problem of cheating likes on brand pages and announced changes to their counting system. Soon the social network will remove "likes" from users whose accounts have been deactivated.
This applies to deceased users and to those whose profiles have been deleted for violating the terms of use of the social network or due to prolonged inactivity.
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Open profile
This feature is currently only available in some countries and on certain devices.
If you see the icon on a person's profile, it means they have closed their profile and restricted access to their content to people who are not on their Facebook friends list.
When a person closes their profile, only their friends see the following content:
Profile photos and publications.
Full size profile and cover photos.
Stories.
New publications and photos.
Also:
Any public posts that this person has previously shared will only be visible to their friends.
