The Visual Guide to Making Your Facebook Profile Private Again

I’ve often said that if you look up a list of antonyms for the word “privacy” that “Facebook” would be at the top of the list. Let’s face it, if you use Facebook, you’re probably sharing more about yourself and your private information than you should be.

Facebook is a “free” online social network. What this means is that while Facebook doesn’t charge you a monthly fee (and most likely never will, contrary to many online rumors), it does take something from you that’s much more valuable: your personal information.

How Does Facebook Make Money?

Facebook sells the personal data it collects from you to its advertisers, so they can better target ads to convince you to buy things. The social network’s parent company, Meta collected nearly $118 billion in revenue during 2021, a 37.18% increase from close to $86 billion in revenue during 2020.

All of this is based on personal information that the service’s users give up completely voluntarily.

“But, it’s too late for me,” I can hear many of you say. “I’m already in too deep. Go help others by sharing my tale of woe.”

Not so fast, Sparky. There is still hope for you – and your privacy.

In this article, I’m going to guide you through the many ways you can keep your Facebook profile private from the moment you first set it up.

And, for those of you who have been using Facebook and oversharing your private info with advertisers and scam artists, I’m going to show you how to make your profile private again.

While it’s impossible to completely lock your Facebook profile down, I’ll share some tips that will allow you to keep the important parts of your Facebook profile private, while still allowing you to enjoy the service and stay in touch with friends and family.

What Kind of Information Facebook Collects

Before starting to lock down your profile, I’m going to go over some of the interesting information that is included on the Facebook Privacy page. It offers a great amount of information on what type of data the service collects, how they use that data for their own operations, how they share it, and much more.

This section of the article should have actually been entitled, “What Kind of Information Facebook DOESN’T Collect.” It would have been a much shorter section, believe me.

The amount and types of info that Facebook collects about you varies depending on what services and such you make use of on the social network. To take a look at Facebook’s own listing of what types of information they collect, scroll down to the bottom of your Facebook page and look in the lower left-hand corner for the “Privacy” link, as shown below. Click that link.

Once you’re on the Facebook Privacy page, click the first link, the one entitled: “What information do we collect?”

As you’ll soon find out, Facebook collects just about everything you can think of about you and your connection, and maybe a few things you didn’t think of. Let’s go over it section by section, shall we?

Your Activity and Information You Provide

Facebook collects information from you when you sign up for their social network. They collect your name, your email address or phone number, your gender, and your birthdate. That is almost all the information you’re required to furnish when you’re applying for a credit card online.

Once you’re signed up for Facebook, the data collection and mining begin in earnest. The social network collects info about how you use their service, including the types of content you view and engage with, and how much time you spend engaged with that content.

Facebook collects information about your posts, comments, and audio, as well as content you create through the service’s camera features or through its voice-enabled features. It also looks at the content of messages that you send and receive, except for end-to-end encrypted messages (and they can look at them if someone lodges a complaint about your messages). It also tracks the hashtags you use (#nosynellies).

They also have access to metadata related to your content and messages. They also track the types of content you view and interact with. As well as how you interact with it. It also tracks the apps and features you use, and how you use them. It tracks your purchases and transactions, including credit card information. It tracks when you access its products, how often you do that, and how long you take while doing so.

Friends, Followers, and Other Connections

The service also collects information about friends, followers, groups, accounts, Facebook Pages and other users, and communities you’re connected to and interact with. This includes how you interact with them across Meta’s products and services, as well as which ones you interact with the most. They also track the contact information about those individuals that you might upload, enter, or import into the service.

Information About Payments

If you use Facebook Services for purchases or other financial transactions, such as when you buy something in a game or donate to a charity, they collect info about the deal. Information collected includes billing, shipping, and contact details.

App, Browser, and Device Information

They learn all about the computers and other electronic devices you use to access Facebook. This includes your device’s operating system, hardware version, settings, software names and types, battery and signal strength, and device identifiers.

It also tracks what you’re doing on your device, whether Facebook is in the foreground and even if your mouse is moving. (The service says it’s to tell human activity from bot activity.

It doesn’t stop there, though. Also collected is information about your device’s current location, which it receives using your device’s GPS, Bluetooth, and WiFi signals. The social network also collects info about your mobile carrier or ISP, the type of browser you’re using to access Facebook, and your language, local time zone, cell phone number, and current IP address.

Information From Websites and Apps That Use Facebook Services

When you click “Like” for a third-party website or app that uses Facebook’s services, or when you use the Facebook Login option to connect to their websites, the network grabs information from those sites and services. This includes info about the websites and apps you use, how you use their services, and the information you provide to said website or app.

Information From Third-Party Partners

Companies that Facebook partners with or that advertise on Facebook also supply information to Facebook on your experiences or interactions with them.

Facebook Companies

The social network also gathers info about you from companies that are owned or operated by Facebook. These companies include Instagram, Oculus, WhatsApp, and many other firms.

How Does Facebook Use the Information It Collects?

Facebook doesn’t gather all of this personal information about its users simply because they’re curious. Their entire business model is built on collecting personal information about their users.

The network says they collect the info so they can create “engaging and customized experiences” for their users. More importantly, they share all of this gathered information with their advertisers and business partners. (And, they collect a nice piece of change for doing it.)

The social network says they use the collected information to provide shortcuts and suggestions, such as offering a suggestion about which friends to tag in a photo you’ve just posted. They use location information to suggest nearby events and businesses.

Facebook seems open enough about using your information for profit, as they list a good number of the ways they sell your personal info and usage statistics to their partners. They admit to using it to tailor ads to your activities on the site. The service claims they keep personally-identifying information private unless you give them permission.

Information shared with advertisers includes how the customer’s ad performed, which includes how many users viewed the ad or installed an app after viewing the ad.

Non-identifying demographic information is also supplied to advertisers. This info includes such statistics as the gender of the user, their country of origin, and their likes and dislikes.

If you’re interested in why you see a particular ad or types of ads, you can review your Facebook advertising preferences to help better understand why you’re getting all of those ads for nail fungus remedies.

Facebook Privacy Tools

Believe it or not, Facebook actually has privacy tools built into their community, which are designed to help you somewhat protect your online profile. I say “somewhat” because let’s face it: Facebook still wants to collect personal information about you to sell.

Almost none of the settings I’m going to show you are enabled by default, so if you haven’t already taken a look at these settings and modified them in your favor, you are not protected by them.

So, let’s dig in and start making your Facebook profile private again.

Ad Preferences

Facebook is all about serving up ads based on your profile, activities, “Likes”, and any other information they can glean from your usage. So let’s look closer at limiting what they can use. We’ll be looking at the “Ad Preferences” section on Facebook, so make sure you’re logged in, and then visit the Ad Preferences page.

On the Ad Preferences page, you’ll find three options that you can click:

• Advertisers
• Ad Topics
• Ad Settings

Advertisers

In this section, you can take a look at “Advertisers you’ve hidden” and “Advertisers whose ads you’ve clicked.”

When you click “Advertisers you’ve hidden” you’ll find a list of advertisers that you’ve hidden in Facebook. If you so decide, you can click the “Undo” button next to an advertiser’s name to once again allow Facebook to show ads from them.

On the “Advertisers whose ads you’ve clicked” page, you’ll see a list of the advertisers that you’ve clicked on their ads for more information. (Seems logical, right?) If you decide that you don’t want to see any additional ads from an advertiser on the list you can simply click on the “Hide Ads” button next to an advertiser’s name.

Ad Topics

In this section, you can view the topics used by advertisers to display ads in your feeds. (Advertisers can choose to reach you based on topics Facebook thinks you like from your activity.) You can click each topic and click to see less ads based on this topic, if you so wish.

You can also click ad topics that you’re currently seeing ads based on and designate whether or not you’d like to continue to see less of each ad.

Ad Settings

In this section, you can control how your Facebook data and usage is used when the social network shows you ads.

You can control whether ads are personalized based on your activity on other websites, apps, or even offline. Also available are options to control which of your interests are used to show ads, the advertisers that are allowed to use your activity and information, and how advertisers are allowed to reach you when you’re on other sites.

Your Facebook Information

This area allows you to view or download your profile information and manage your personal profile activity.

• “Access profile information” allows you to view your activity across Facebook, your personal information and connections, the information that Facebook logs about your activity, your preferences, and more.
• “Transfer a copy of your information” allows you to transfer your Facebook photos, videos, notes, and posts to another service, such as Google Photos and Docs, Dropbox, and other services.
• “Download profile information” allows you to download a copy of your profile info to keep or transfer to another service.
• “Activity log” allows you to view a log of all of your Facebook activity, including your interactions, activities you’ve been tagged in, your connections, your profile info, and more.
• “Off-Facebook Activity” allows you to view and/or clear the activities you’ve engaged in with businesses and organizations you visit off of Facebook.
• “Managing your information” is where you can learn more about how to manage your information on both Facebook and Instagram.
• “Deactivation and deletion” allows you to temporarily deactivate your Facebook account or even permanently delete it.

Managing Your Privacy

Your Posts

By default, any posts you make on Facebook can be seen by the “Public.”

This means anyone, whether they are connected to you or not, can view your posts. While this may not be a big deal for many of your posts, there may be others that you only want friends to see. And occasionally, you may post things you want some of your friends to see, but not others.

To take a look at what your current setting is, go to the “Settings” page. Just click your profile photo, located in the upper right-hand corner of your Facebook page. Then click “Settings & Privacy” in the menu that appears. Then click “Settings” in the next menu that appears.

In the Settings menu, click the “Privacy” menu item. This will display the “Privacy Settings and Tools” in your browser, as shown below.

We’re going to be looking at the “Your Activity” section first.

Who Can See Your Future Posts?

Right at the top of the “Your Activity” section is the “Who can see your future posts?” setting. This setting allows you to manage the privacy of what you share on Facebook. Whichever option you select here will be the default for any future posts you make.

The options are (make sure you click “See all” to see all of the options):

• Public – Anyone on or off Facebook can see “Public” posts.
• Friends – Only those Facebook users you have added as “Friends” will be able to view your new posts.
• Friends except… – If you click this menu option, you can designate which of your friends will NOT be able to see your future posts.
• Specific friends – This option allows you to specify the only Facebook friends that WILL be allowed to see future posts.
• Only me – If you select this option, your future posts will only be seen by yourself; no one else will have access to them. This seems to defeat the purpose of posting on a social network, but I guess there could be uses for this.

You can also make the same changes to Limit The Audience for Old Posts on Your Timeline and limit who can see the people, pages, and lists you follow.

How People Find and Contact You

“Who can send you friend requests?” defaults to “Everyone,” which means any Facebook user can send you a friend request, which is why you’re currently receiving requests from users who have absolutely no connection to you.

This section allows users to designate who can send them friend requests.

Since there is not a “No one” option, I suggest setting this to “Friends of friends” – at least then you’ll have some connection to users reaching out to you.

Who Can See Your Friends List?

This controls who can see your friends list on Facebook. Luckily, the social network has provided an “Only Me” option for this setting. I recommend setting this option to “Only Me.”

Who Can Look Me Up?

This section of the Privacy menu controls which Facebook users can look you up, via either the email address or the phone number you provided when you signed up for Facebook. It also controls whether or not search engines outside of Facebook can link to your profile.

For both the email and phone number “look me up” settings, now have four choices: “Everyone,” “Friends of friends,” “Friends,” and “Only me.” If you want to keep your Facebook profile completely private, I suggest selecting “Only me.” This is as tightly as you can lock both of these settings down.

As for the “Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?” setting, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with your Facebook profile.

If you’re trying to gain publicity for your business or project, or you’re just trying to get your name out there, allow search engines to link to your profile. If you’re just connecting with friends and family, don’t allow this.

Either way, your profile can still be found by users searching via Facebook.

How You Get Message Requests

These settings allow you to decide whether message requests will go to your Chats list, your Message requests folder, or whether you’ll receive them at all.

You can control whether or not you receive message requests from People with your phone number, Friends of friends on Facebook, Accounts you follow or have chatted with on Instagram, Your followers on Instagram, Others on Facebook, and Others on Instagram.

The available options include “Chats,” “Message requests,” and “Don’t receive requests.” If you completely want to lock down requests, choose “Don’t receive requests.” If you want to be sociable but still want some control, select “Message requests.”

Profile and Tagging

Facebook’s Profile and Tagging settings control who can add things to your timeline, who can see things on your timeline, and what tags other users can add to posts and photos.

Who can post on your profile?

In the “Who can post on your profile?” section, you can control whether or not to allow your Facebook friends to add items on your profile.

If allowed, friends can post things like a Happy Birthday greeting on your Timeline, or your Timeline will show when they tag you in a post. Setting it to “Only me” locks down your account to only allow your own posts to appear in your Timeline.

Who can see what others post on your profile?

Here, you can review what others will see on your Timeline, who can see posts that you’ve been tagged in, and who can see what others post on your Timeline.

Also, in the “Tagging” section is the ability to set whether or not you want to review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your Timeline. If this is enabled, you will be required to review each post by others to your Timeline.

This setting only controls what is allowed to display on your Timeline. Any posts you’re tagged in will still appear in Facebook search, News Feed, and other places around the Facebook network.

One handy tool included here is the ability to see your Timeline as others would see it. You can view your Timeline as how the Facebook Public would see it, or how a specific user would see it. This is quite handy when you want to make sure you have certain posts hidden from the right (or wrong) set of eyes.

Blocking

The “Blocking” section of the Settings menu offers you a set of tools to allow you to add friends to a “Restricted List,” completely block a user, block messages from a specific user, block app and event invites, block apps, and block pages.

Restricted List

The Restricted List allows you to add friends who should not see posts on Facebook shared only with friends. Restricted users will still see things that are shared with the Public or to a mutual friend’s Timeline. They also still see posts they are tagged in. Don’t worry – your friends aren’t notified when they’re added to the Restricted List.

Block Users

This section allows you to completely block other Facebook users. This is handy for blocking bullies, exes, and those who you no longer want to communicate with, but who can’t seem to take a hint.

When added to this list, users cannot post on your timeline, invite you to events or groups, start a conversation with you, or add you as a friend.

Block Messages

This option allows you to block messages and video calls from anyone you place on the list. While they won’t be able to contact you in the Messenger app, they may still be able to post to your Timeline or tag you, and comment on your posts or comments – unless they have been specifically blocked from doing so in your Restricted List.

Block App Invites

When you add a Facebook user to this list, it means you’ll no longer see future app requests from that user. If you haven’t added the friend to this list already, and they send you an app invite, you can click the “Ignore All Invites From This Friend” link under their latest request.

Block Event Invites

Adding a friend to this list means you’ll no longer receive any event invites from that friend.

Block Apps

In this section, you can add Facebook apps to a block list. Once an app is blocked, it can no longer contact you in any way or retrieve any private info about you.

Block Pages

Any Page name entered here loses the right to interact with your posts, like your posts and comments, or reply to your comments. You will also no longer be able to post to the Page’s Timeline or message the Page. Blocking a Page also unlikes and unfollows it.

Apps and Websites Settings

The Facebook Apps and Websites Settings menu offers you a single location to view which apps use your Facebook credentials for logins and which apps and websites you can review and manage the non-public information each app or website has permission to access, or remove their access. You can edit apps’ access or delete the apps you no longer use.

If you’re locking down your Facebook profile, I highly recommend going through all of the apps and scoping out their settings.

To edit an app’s settings, simply click the “View and Edit” button.

Once you’ve clicked the “View and Edit” button, you’ll be presented with a listing of what Facebook-related information you provide to this app. Such information can include your name and profile information, your email address, birthday, page likes, and friends list.

You can completely remove the app or website access or remove each setting. I have been on Facebook for well over 10 years now, and I was amazed at how many apps I had used my Facebook credentials to access.

I imagine my intention in my more security-naive days was to make it easier to keep track of logins, but I must admit, there were plenty of “WTF?” (What the Fudge) moments while I was perusing the list of apps.

I ended up deleting 99% of the app authorizations I had agreed to over the years. (It’s a few months later, and I haven’t experienced any lack of use from removing the authorizations.)

While it may take a bit of time to work your way through the list of apps you’ve given your Facebook credentials to, it‘s worth it to lock down the ones you want to keep and delete the apps you either don’t use or can’t remember setting up in the first place.

Action Steps

We’ve looked at quite a few settings that are related to maintaining the privacy of your Facebook profile. While going through each category and locking down certain settings to make your Facebook profile more private may be time-consuming, it will pay dividends for your peace of mind in the end.

To make your Facebook profile private while still allowing you to make use of the social aspects of the network, be sure to do the following:

Know What Information Facebook Collects About You & Exactly How Facebook Uses It

Make sure you know exactly what information Facebook collects on you and your online actions. This comes under the heading of, “If something is free, then you’re the product being sold.”

Pay close attention to what Facebook does with the information it collects about you and your actions. Pay particular attention to who they share the information with.

Learn About Facebook’s Privacy Tools and How To Use Them To Protect Your Personal Information

Familiarize yourself with the tools Facebook supplies to lock down your privacy settings. Don’t just assume your personal info is protected from prying eyes.

Control How Facebook Follows You Around the Web, What Ads It Displays, and What Personal Info the Service Shares With Advertisers

Again, if you want to keep your personal info as private as possible, then you shouldn’t be on Facebook. But seriously, keep track of how your information is shared with advertisers. There’s no need for them to know you better than you know yourself.

If you don’t want to see ads for the Squatty Potty one hundred times a day all because you clicked on the wrong unicorn photo, lock Facebook out from following you around on the other parts of the internet.

Make Sure You Know Exactly Who Will See Your New Posts

This is especially important if your posts tend to be a bit risque, and Father Mulcahy follows you.

It’s even worse if you leave all of your posts on “public,” because then everyone – including potential employers – will be able to see what you were up to in Las Vegas. (What happens there really doesn’t stay there if it’s posted on Facebook. Or Twitter, or Instagram, or…). Lock it down.

Control Who Can Look You Up and Contact You on Facebook

Restrict who can look you up to “Friends” or “Friends of Friends.” I have it set to “Friends.” Strangers don’t need to be able to access any of your personal info, even if it’s just a photo of you at Spring Break ‘04.

And if you don’t want all sorts of unusual characters – and the occasional hacker – sending you a friend request, then lock this one down to only “Friends of Friends.” At least then you have a chance at having something in common.

Stop Outside Search Engines From Linking to Your Facebook Profile

This controls whether or not everyone on the internet can search for your Facebook profile via Google. If your profile is for business, then allow it. A personal one? Nope – keep it locked away.

Control Who Is Allowed to Post to Your Timeline, and What They See on Your Timeline

If your Facebook friends can be trusted to only post cheerful Happy Birthday greetings and such on your Timeline, then by all means, allow your friends to do so. If you have friends like mine, who tend to fall on the mischief-making side of things, lock it down to “Only me.”

Make use of the handy ability to see your Timeline as the public or a specific Facebook user would see it, so you can lock things down accordingly.

Learn How to Review and Manage the Tags Other Users Add to Your Posts and Photos

Keep this one on a short leash to limit your exposure on the web.

Learn How to Block Users, Messages, Event Invites, and App Requests

If you have former friends, lovers, or golfing partners you no longer wish to communicate with on Facebook, learn how to block them as I’ve shown you in this article. Perfect for those clingy folks who just won’t let go.

If you still want to be friends, but can’t stand it when they send you messages, invites, or especially those aggravating game invites (don’t get me started), you can selectively decide how they can communicate with you.

Know Which Apps Use Your Facebook Credentials and Adjust the Settings Accordingly

I’m willing to bet you have scores of apps that you’ve granted access to your Facebook credentials over the years. (It’s just so darned easy!) Make sure to go through the list when you get a chance. You’ll be surprised at how many are on the list. (DELETE! DELETE! DELETE!)

Facebook Privacy FAQs