Facebook is still the biggest social media platform in the world. But while it's convenient for connecting up with friends or colleagues, it also holds more of your personal data than you realize. If you don't have the right privacy settings, a lot of that personal data might be on public display.
While you can't control the advertisers and other outside companies that Facebook chooses to sell your information to, there are ways to ensure that other Facebook users can't see your information unless you want them too.
Here's how to make yourself private on Facebook.
Quick tip: If you don't want anyone to see your profile ever again, consider deactivating or deleting your Facebook account instead. It's a more extreme measure, but still the best way to pull your data off the site.
How to make your Facebook privateFacebook generally has four levels of privacy that you can set your account and posts to.
If you want to make your Facebook as private as possible, you'll want to choose Only me whenever you can.
While some of Facebook's privacy tools are available in the mobile app, you'll need to open the Facebook website on a computer to find all of them.
To get to Facebook's Privacy menu:
1. Open the Facebook website and log into your account.
2. Click your profile picture in the top-right corner, and then select Settings & privacy in the menu that appears.
Head to your Privacy menu. Stefan Ionescu/Insider3. In the submenu, click Settings.
Go to your Facebook profile’s Settings page.
Stefan Ionescu/Insider 4. On the Settings page that opens, click Privacy in the left sidebar.
This will open the Privacy Settings and Tools page with more options:
Make your posts privateFirst, head to Your Activity section to change who's allowed to see your posts, posts you've been tagged in, and pages that you follow.
If you're concerned about people finding your profile and posts, the How People Find and Contact You tools can help keep you hidden.
Using the How You Get Message Requests section, you can limit who's allowed to message you. You can also choose to receive certain messages but filter them into their own folder, away from your inbox.
You can choose Chats (your regular inbox), Message requests (a separate folder), or Don't receive requests (deletes them).The options we talked about above control your entire Facebook account. But whenever you post something, you can give it its own privacy settings. This means you can keep your profile private but make a single post public, and vice versa.
1. When you're creating a Facebook post, click the dropdown button under your name.
Tap this button to choose how private you want the post to be.
Stefan Ionescu/Insider 2. In the menu that opens, select how private or public you want the post to be.
Once you post, only the audience that you choose will be able to see it.
How to set up privacy check reminders on FacebookIt's easy to forget to update the Facebook settings mentioned above as your privacy needs change. Luckily, through Privacy Checkup, you can set reminders that periodically alert you to review them.
1. Open the Facebook website and log into your account.
2. Click your profile picture in the top-right corner of the screen, and then select Settings & Privacy in the menu that appears.
3.
In the submenu, click Privacy Checkup.
4. On the next screen, click the three horizontal dots and select Set up reminders.
5. In the pop-up, select when you want Facebook to remind you to do a privacy check, and then click Save.
Jennifer Still contributed to a previous version of this article.
William Antonelli
Tech Reporter for Insider Reviews
William Antonelli (he/she/they) is a writer, editor, and organizer based in New York City.
As a founding member of the Reference team, he helped grow Tech Reference (now part of Insider Reviews) from humble beginnings into a juggernaut that attracts over 20 million visits a month. Outside of Insider, his writing has appeared in publications like Polygon, The Outline, Kotaku, and more. He's also a go-to source for tech analysis on channels like Newsy, Cheddar, and NewsNation. You can find him on Twitter @DubsRewatcher, or reach him by email at [email protected].
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With so much personal information available on Facebook, including birthdays, jobs and family updates, it’s no surprise you don’t want all of your information shared with the world. When you want to exercise more control of what other Facebook users see, especially those who are not your friends, it’s incredibly easy to do. Follow these few steps to make your Facebook private.
To start moving your profile toward complete privacy, make sure all of your posts are limited to being viewable to just your friends.
1. Log in to your account and select the drop-down arrow in the upper-right corner of the Facebook screen. As the drop-down menu appears, select “Settings & Privacy,” then choose “Settings” again. When the Settings screen appears, look on the left side and locate and click the option for “Privacy.”
2. Look for the “Your Activity” section. It’s here that you can select things like who sees your posts or who can see the pages and people you follow.
3. Next to “Who can see your future posts?” if it says “Public,” make sure you click on the “Edit” button to set it to “Friends” so only those on your friends list can see what you publish. To go one step further, you can choose “Friends except” and add people on your friends list who won’t see any of your posts. You can instead choose “Specific friends” and only show your posts to a select group of people.
The latter two options are definitely more private than the larger “Friends” but also require more manual setup.
4. If you want to be extra cautious, you can also do a sweep of all of your older posts and “Limit the audience for posts you’ve shared with friends of friends or Public” historically. If you choose this option, all of your previous posts will now only be viewable by your friends. Any friends or non-friends (Public) will no longer be able to see the post.
5. Right below the option in the previous step is another setting for “Who can see the people, Pages and lists you follow?” This is a good step to ensure as much privacy as possible by setting this option to “Only me”. You can also set it to the same set of groups in step four with Friends, Friends except, Specific friends, etc. but each of those offer limited privacy. The best choice here is “Only me,” as that way you can be sure nobody can see a good chunk of your profile.
In the same way you locked down your posts in the steps above, it’s time to do the same with your friends list.
1. Start by clicking on “Who can see your friends list?” and making sure it’s set to “Only me”. Again, you have a few choices here, but if privacy is your biggest concern, choosing “Only me” is the best for your peace of mind.
2. There are a few other options here that you should manually set to “Friends” or “Only me.”
Your Facebook an be easily made private on the mobile app, too.
1. Begin by launching the Facebook app on your iOS or Android smartphone or tablet. At the bottom right of the screen is a three-line menu you can tap on. Scroll down until you see the menu option for “Settings & Privacy” and tap on that so a list of options appears. “Settings” should be at the top of the list. Tap on it and scroll down until you see “Privacy.”
2. Under Privacy, tap on the very first option, “Privacy Settings,” then tap on the first option labeled “Check a few important settings.”
3. In this menu, the first box on the left is “Who can see what you share.” Tap on this and on “Continue” to locate the settings for “Friends and Following.” Here you should change both of these two settings, “Who can see your friends list on your profile?” and “Who can see the people, Pages and lists you follow?” to “Only me.”
4. Once changes have been made, tap on Next and edit “Future Posts” and “Stories” to “Friends” for the best privacy level. Similar to the desktop, you can also see “Limit Past Posts” to remove non-friends from previously-tagged photos or posts.
Tap Next again to save all of the changes and go back to your Facebook feed.
Facebook is an incredible tool that has connected billions of users around the world. Instead of sharing with the public, it is best to make your Facebook private and only share with your friends. You can easily change your settings to do that, and reversing the process is just as easy. And if you ever feel like getting rid of your account, know that you can still view content without a Facebook account.
David Joz
David is a freelance tech writer with over 15 years of experience in the tech industry. He loves all things Nintendo.
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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.
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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.
Thus, all our previous entries will become visible only to friends. nine0016 
nine0016 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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nine0088Facebook is set by default to publish all your information. 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? Can you change your default account settings?
If you've been wondering how to make your Facebook profile private, you've come to the right place. Keep reading to find out more. nine0003
If you want to make your Facebook profile private through a browser, you should do the following:
Windows programs, mobile applications, games - EVERYTHING is FREE, in our closed telegram channel - Subscribe :)
When Facebook users check your profile, the first thing they see is your profile picture. Here's what you need to do to change who can see your profile picture:
Those who normally use Facebook on their phone and want to make their profile private should follow these steps:
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If you have an iPhone and want to make your Facebook profile private, follow the steps above.
Those with an Android phone can follow the same steps as iPhone users to make their Facebook profile private. Check them out in the section above. nine0003
What if you want to hide the contents of your Facebook profile from non-friends? How to do it? Just follow these steps carefully:
We've covered the most common Facebook privacy concerns. However, if you'd like to learn more, check out some of the additional questions and answers in the next section. nine0003
If you want to make your Facebook account more private, a good place to start is by changing who can see your future posts. For example, you can hide your birthday, relationship status, friends list, restrict friend requests to certain people, keep private photos, etc.
To create a personal Facebook account, you just need to change your privacy settings.
