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The Comprehensive Guide to Facebook Privacy Settings
UPDATE 4/28/15: We have a completely new and updated guide to Facebook Privacy Settings. Click HERE to get our latest advice.
The first thing you have to realize about Facebook: Nothing you put there is truly private. Yes, you can control how users see or don’t see your profile. But every time you like a product or even look at a page, the company itself is taking note. This doesn’t mean that some day Facebook will malevolently release your every click to the world. But it does mean that Facebook is not your private diary, and what you do on the website gets collected and catalogued. That's worth keeping in mind whenever you use the service.
That said, Facebook is a great way to stay in touch and share small and big moments with family, friends and assorted other connections. The key is making sure you’re presenting the most appropriate profile possible to each friend. So let’s go over the various settings you can change to ensure pictures of your wacky jaunt to Vegas don’t end up at the top of your boss's news feed. Since Facebook tends to opt you in automatically to sharing information as new features are released, it's a good idea to check your privacy settings every few months to maintain the level of transparency you want.
The following information was updated on March 12, 2014.
Check your current basic privacy settings
When you log in to Facebook, in the top right corner are two different ways to access your privacy settings. Clicking the lock icon opens a drop-down menu that shows Privacy Shortcuts. From here, you can make a few key changes to your settings.
Who can see my stuff?
In this section, you get three settings to control how your posts are seen on the site and by whom.
Who can see my future posts?
Your options here are Public, Friends, Only Me and Custom. What you set this to becomes the default sharing setting for all your future posts. It does not affect anything you've previously posted.
We recommend you set this to Friends. If in the future you want to post something that you don't want all your friends to see, you can change this setting right in the post box. No need to come back to this default setting for one post.
You can also group your Facebook Friends in lists and restrict your posts to those lists. Use the Custom option for that.
Only set posts to Public that you are very sure you want out on the Internet forever. Public posts will be captured by Google and other web indexing services and made available to the world for all to see.
Where do I review who can see or find things I've posted or been tagged in?
This will take you to the Activity Log page. Here you can look at every post you've written, every photo you've uploaded, every friend's post you've liked and more. Basically, everything you've done on Facebook or been tagged as doing by others will show up here.
As you go down the list, you can un-like posts you don't want to be associated with, take yourself off tagged photos and even see posts you've hidden from your personal timeline.
You can also change who can see your posts and photos (i.e. custom setting) on an individual basis. And for your friend's posts you've liked and commented on, you can see the privacy settings on those. Didn't know that post you commented on was set to Public? You do now.
What do other people see on my timeline?
This will take you to a page where you can view your timeline the way others see it, even the public. You won't see much difference in your timeline view if you choose to see what it shows to different friends. This is mostly if you have set certain posts to be restricted (or thought you had).
One thing that is of interest is what is public — for example, the header picture you set to be at the top of your timeline. That's right: If it's a picture of your kids, that is public.
Who can contact me?
People who are not your Facebook friends can still send you messages. This is where you can change that.
Whose messages do I want filtered into my Inbox?
It comes as a surprise to many people that they have a Facebook inbox. It's hidden down in a few menus. First, click on Messages on the left column of your Facebook home page under your name and profile picture. On the Messages page that then appears, click on the downward arrow next to the word More and choose Unread. You will now see the messages you never knew you had.
You have two choices for filtering what messages get to you: Basic (loosely defined as "people you may know") and Strict. What this boils down to is do you want messages from people who are friends of friends or not at all? Basic is more lenient with allowing emails; Strict is not.
Who can send me friend requests?
The default here is Everyone, because Facebook wants your network of social interactions to grow. But if you want to limit requests, you can always change it to only allow Friends of friends to send you requests.
How do I stop someone from bothering me?
This one is simple. Just enter in the name of the person or their email. Facebook will unfriend them for you, stop them from starting a new conversation with you and prevent them from seeing any of your posts.
Facebook doesn't like you to unfriend other users, and it provides a few alternate courses of action including messaging the friend to let them know they are bothering you as well as instructions on how to hide someone's updates from your news feed without unfriending them.
If you later change your mind, click on the View All Blocked Users to see who you have blocked, and unblock them. You will have to wait 48 hours to reblock them again.
Advanced settings
Now that we've covered the basics of privacy settings, we can dive into a few more options that will make your Facebook experience more pleasant.
Customize all your timeline settings.
Now that you've mastered the basics, go down to the next section, Timeline and Tagging. From there, you can control exactly who sees what on your timeline, who can post to your timeline, and who can tag you in photos and posts. To check how people see your timeline, you can type any user’s name into View As. It’s a quick way to double-check that your boss doesn’t see your vacation pictures.
To customize your timeline settings, click on the button in the far right corner to reveal a drop-down menu and select Privacy Settings.
Who can post on your timeline?
It's set by default to Friends, and the only other option is to allow only yourself to post on your timeline. This gives you the most control over what appears on your timeline.
Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your Timeline.
If you are concerned about getting tagged in a photo that you don't want all your friends on Facebook to see, this is the setting for you. Once enabled, you'll have to manually approve any photo or posts you are tagged in before they appear on your timeline. Note that this only affects timeline; those updates will still appear in searches, the news feed and other places unless you un-tag yourself.
Review what other people see on your timeline.
As we mentioned above, it's a perfect way to check that your mother or boss won't see what you don't want them to.
Who can see posts you've been tagged in on your timeline? & Who can see what others post on your timeline?
These areas give you a great deal of flexibility, with options ranging from Everyone to Friends of Friends to custom lists. Using these two in conjunction with manually approving what photos and updates you've been tagged in goes a long way to keep prying eyes away from more sensitive Facebook updates.
Review tags people add to your own posts before the tags appear on Facebook.
This is an important option if you are concerned about a photo popping up on your timeline. This applies only to photo tagging by your Facebook friends. You'll always be notified if someone who's not your friend tags you in a photo.
When you're tagged in a post, who do you want to add to the audience if they weren't already in it?
This one sounds more complicated than it is. Often a Facebook friend of yours will make a post and tag you in it. The option here allows all of your Facebook friends to see an update or photo you've been tagged in by someone they aren't friends with themselves (the Friends of Friends function).
You can choose to remain tagged but have none of your other Facebook friends see that update, limit who sees that update to certain groups of friends, or you can outright block certain Facebook friends altogether by using the Custom option.
Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are updated?
Facebook uses face-matching technology to suggest who you should tag in photos. It will only suggest people that are on the user's friends list. If you don't want to show up as an option when your friends are tagging photos, set this to No One.
Blocking
If you want to take steps to keep people away from your profile, this is the section for you.
Restricted list
If you don’t want to un-friend somebody but you don’t want them to see all of your information, you can add them to the Restricted List. This means they can only see your public information, but they have no way of knowing you’ve limited their view (unless they happen to see someone who isn’t restricted browsing your profile — but that’s probably not going to happen).
Block users
You can also just straight up block somebody. This means this person cannot be your friend. This is an excellent setting if you have stalkers or other people consistently bothering you. Note that this does not stop them from interacting with you in apps, games or groups you're both a part of.
Block app invites
In addition to blocking and restricting people from your profile, you can also block app invitations on a user-by-user basis. So if your Aunt Jackie keeps bombarding you with FarmVille apps, you know what to do.
Block event invites
Tired of your nephew inviting you to his New York City raves every weekend? Typing the name of the Facebook user into this section will stop you from seeing any future event invites from that person.
Block apps
Some apps and Facebook games are great fun at first, but after a while, you want to drop them. You can remove the app or game (see the Apps you use section, below) or block the app, which means it can no longer contact you or get non-public information about you through Facebook. If you are getting emails from the app, you will have to use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.
Customize your app privacy
After you finish adjusting the blocking section, click over to the App Settings section. It’s not quite as obvious as changing your timeline settings, but apps often gain a lot of access to your information, and they can do things you might not want them to: collect data about your location, post on your timeline and more.
Apps you use
Click Edit next to a listed app to gain all sorts of controls, including who can see that you are using the app to removing the app altogether. If you want to remove an app, click on the X to the right of the Edit button.
Apps others use
This is where you can control what apps find out about you when you are the friend of the person using the app. Choose exactly what information apps can pull from your profile in 17 different categories.
Instant personalization
Facebook provides profile information about you to outside sites to "personalize your experience." That's Facebook code-speak for looking at your profile to deliver ads and content the company believes you'll be more interested in. Sites listed include Bing, Yelp, Zynga and others.
If you don't want these outside sites to pull your profile Facebook, click the checkbox in this section. You'll get two warnings before it actually happens, so be sure to click through all boxes.
Old versions of Facebook for mobile
If you use an older version of Facebook mobile (such as outdated versions of Facebook for Blackberry), you won't be able to select who can see your updates when posting from that app. You can set it here instead.
Customize your ad settings
Facebook is now a pervasive marketing and advertising tool, and all sorts of businesses want access to your preferences so they can better target you. It’s kind of impossible to use Facebook without leaving some sort of trail of breadcrumbs for advertisers, but you can reduce this in a couple of ways.
First, go to your Ad Settings, located right under App Settings. If you don’t want Facebook to use your preferences in ads, click on the Edit button on the right of the Ads & Friends and Third Party Sites and then change those settings to No One. That means your name won’t get used in an ad for something that you’ve liked. However, this won't prevent sponsored posts from companies you've liked — those items that appear in the news feed, not ads — from being sent with your name. And you'll still receive sponsored posts from companies your friends have liked.
If looking at targeted ads gives you the heebie-jeebies, you can dial down the frequency of the ads by manually hiding stories by each company that targets you. It’s a cumbersome task, but it allows you to get rid of ads that are particularly annoying. You can do this by clicking the small X in the upper right corner of an ad.
Taking these steps will help you control who sees your Facebook page, but you should check every so often to make sure your privacy settings have remained the same.
Still have questions? Leave them in the comments below, and we'll see what we can do to find answers for you.
[astonished woman with laptop image via Shutterstock]
Discussion 
Hi! I posted a question on a person’s Facebook. I am not friends with the person, nor is anyone I know: thus, I was shocked when one of my Facebook friends mentioned my post. My post, as well as the person’s reply, only show up on the person’s Facebook and not on my timeline (when the person replied, I received a Facebook Notification). When I checked my Activity Log, I could see the post that I had made and that it was marked as Public.
I do not see how to make a post on someone else’s Facebook be private or public: nor do I see any way to be able to change the setting for a previous post on someone else’s Facebook. Is there any way that these two things can be done?
Thank you for your time and assistance! I look forward to your reply!
When you post on someone else’s Timeline or Page, the privacy settings are determined by the Page owner.
To contact someone privately, you should Message them instead. Though given Facebook’s past history, I wouldn’t be 100% certain that messages couldn’t become visible at some point, either.
how do i not let my friends list show on facebook?? do not want peopke to see who my friends are…
Confusingly, Facebook does not make this available in the Privacy Settings section. You need to go to your Timeline to fix this:
1. Go to your timeline
2. Click on the Friends tab (under your cover photo)
3. Click the Manage button (looks like a little pencil) and then the Manage Privacy option.
From there you can change the visibility of your Friends list.
There is no “Manage Privacy” option Josh. There is a “Manage Sections” and “Edit Privacy” and I found within “Manage Sections” there is a faint checkmark next to “About”, “Photos” and “Friends”. When I move my mouse there to uncheck the faint check, the arrow disappears and it won’t allow me to uncheck the check! This is odd. While the checkmark on “Events”, which I allow my friends to see is darker than the checkmark on the 3 mentioned I think they are permanent?
Hi, any time i check in at a location, it is always set on the ‘only me’ option and each time i have to manually change it to ‘friends’. This has been an ongoing issue for the longest time, could you please tell me how i could check in and not have to manually change anything.
Hi,If a friend posts a comment on my timeline and I delete it and block them, can mutual friend still see the post on that person’s wall?
Hi there , some of my friends are having trouble tagging me in posts they said after they do they @ symbol my name just doesnt come up ? These are friends I regulary talk to in fb so I have no idea why this is happening ???
I posted a pic.To a guys page that I’m dating.ut was a pic of his cat and I. When I go to his page I see that post. Now when my friends goes to his page thAt are friends with him on facebook.they don’t see my pics I posted but tgey see all the other posts.doez this mean he is hiding my pics that I tag to him fromeverybody and his friends?
Facebook gives you the option of reviewing posts other people tag you in before they appear in your timeline: https://www.facebook.com/help/www/168229546579373?rdrhc. So he probably hasn’t “approved” your post for public view.
when you are looking at someones page and you see the friends box kind of at the top of the page. There are about 6 pictures of different friends in a box. Is there a meaning behind order that those pictures are placed cuz I have noticed sometimes those pictures change sometimes my friends will be at number one or number 2 in that friend box. Does it meanthat those people are searching their pages more or that person’s page I went to is searching those peoples pages?
A good friend of mine, she uses Facebook Mobile but now there is no phone icon next to message. All I can see are posts she shares and can no longer see her any of her contact info (phone number, email addresses etc). Was wondering if she restricted me or added me to acquaintances list or what?? Please help, thank you!
Sometimes when I go onto facebook all of a sudden I get someone wanting to chat with me and I’m not wanting to chat..isthere a way to not be seen…
I have a friend that posts comments and selfies like a 100 times a day. I use to be able to click on her name and remove her from my time line but now FB has changed that. I just deleted her and immediately she sent me an PM saying “hey what happened did you get hacked” and she sent me another friends request. How can I keep her as a friend but not see her 100 posts a day???
Just go to your Timeline. Go to the Friends tab. Put the mouse over the button that says “Friends” next to the friend you want to block. Change them to “Acquaintance” and you will see “Only Important” updates (which means very few). You could also choose “Settings” instead and manually decide what types of updates you’ll see.
Great write up thank you.
Would you please expound on what the differences between the locked down And restricted lists are please? Thank you again.
If I block people, will that also delete any of my likes or comments on their posts/pictures? Or does my entire FB account have to be deleted and reconstructed, severing “my ties” with their accounts completely?
Hi,
I’m friends with people but unable to write on their wall or send them a private message - why is this please?
I have a restricted list with friend A on it.
I Post a status message where everybody but this list can see it, friend A cant see it which is ok.
Friend B can see my status, but it happpens that Friend B is also Friend with Friend A.
What happens if Friend B comments or shares my status, wont this show up in Friend A’s newsfeed then ?
I am just learning how to use my new ipad and usually check facebook out on my Dell Vostro notebook computer. This morning I logged onto facebook via my ipad and searched for someone I know but an not a facebook “friend”. Their photo immediately appeared on the top right side of my facebook page and newsfeed under group chats (I have none) with an icon to the left of their photo saying “create group chat”. I don’t want them to show up on my newsfeed or anywhere else. I don’t want to join or create a group either. How can I remove this person’s profile from my page? We are not friends. I just checked facebook on my notebook book and because I deleted my favorites/friends column on the right side, it doesn’t show up there. I’ve never been able to figure out how to unhide and get my friends list back on the right side of my newsfeed but it’s not a big deal. It shows up on my ipad.
Any words of wisdom would be appreciated. I kinda freaked out when I saw this person’s photo on my newsfeed page.
Thanks in advane.
If you didn’t accidentally add them as a friend (which you can verify by looking at their profile or checking your friends list), it’s probably just showing up as a “suggestion” from Facebook. So unless you actually see their posts showing up in your newsfeed, I wouldn’t worry about it.
You can also go to their profile and there should be a button there at the top to “block them”. That would prevent them from ever contacting you and maybe will prevent them from showing up as a suggestion.
When I go to a certain friends profile page, the ‘posts’ side is blank for quite a ways till I scroll for a while. Then the supposedly last thing they posted, which at this point is about 13 days ago, shows up. Why isn’t it at the top of the page? Does this mean that anything that was posted after that last post , I am being kept privy to? Thank you. I look forward to your reply.
A friend and I just started a FB Group. While others have had no problem joining, one gal keeps trying to no avail. Anyone have any ideas as to why she keeps getting this error message when she used the link (that I gave her) to get to our page and how she can fix it? Here’s the mssg she keeps getting:
“The page you requested cannot be displayed right now. It may be temporarily unavailable the link you clicked on may have expired or you may not have permission to view this page.”
Hi,
I’ve came across this post today and you seem quite good with all the Fb knowledge. Maybe you can answer the following: I have set my account so that only friend of friends can add me. Today tho I had a request from someone that I don’t know and who isn’t friends with any of my friends. How can that be??? I’ve doublechecked all my settings and everything is set correctly.
Please can you advise.
Many thanks
J
Hi,
I’ve came across this post today and you seem quite good with all the Fb knowledge. Maybe you can answer the following: I have set my account so that only friend of friends can add me. Today tho I had a request from someone that I don’t know and who isn’t friends with any of my friends. How can that be??? I’ve doublechecked all my settings and everything is set correctly.
Please can you advise.
Many thanks
J
Hi,
I tagged a friend in multiple photos and the pictures showed up on the other people tagged, but not on this particular person’s timeline: why is that? Are we “friends” but I’ve been “unfollowed”?
Thanks for any help.
Hi,
I’ve tagged friends in pictures and the pictures show up in all of the tagged friends timelines, except for one person: is it possible that we’re “friends” but that I’ve been “unfollowed?” Thank you for any help!
I used to be able to post comments on a Facebook Magazine page (Bygone Croydon), but now I don’t seem to have the option to post comments. Is this to do with my own privacy settings are is it theirs?
Page owners can prohibit comments entirely or ban specific users. I have the option to post comments on the page you mentioned. Is it possible you may have been banned for some reason?
I often sell things on yard-sell groups, my question is: sometimes a non-friend comments that they have tried sending me a PM but it won’t let them; while others have no problem sending me one.
I have checked my settings and it’s set where anyone can get a hold of me through PM. Even my profile has the message box. So, what could be the problem and is there away I can fix it?
Hi there, how can I stop double posts appearing on my page? Whenever I share a friend’s post, no matter where it appeared on my page, it then reappears along with my “sharing” of it. So I end up seeing my shared image above the friend’s original post.
Hope that’s not confusing :D
Thanks
On ipad. Updated fb per app recommendation 2/11. Big mistake. Since then, get 2 error messages hen I try to share from newsfeed to my timeline. One says page won’t allow me to share. Not true. Second says its spam. Also not true. I can go back hours later then it allows me to share but I don’t have time to do this a lot. And it takes forever to scroll. Why is this happening now ( never has before) and what can I do about it? No response from fb. Thanks for any help.
Ipad. Updated fb per app recommendations 2/11. Since then get error messages when I try to post from newsfeed to time line. Why is this happening and what can I do to get rid of this? Thanks.
Thoroughly confused… I have someone designated as a “close friend” on Facebook. I can see his status updates and pictures he posts, etc, and I can comment on them, but I can no longer “like” anything he posts. I click the like button, and it momentarily shows up that I liked the post/picture, but as soon as I refresh or leave the page, my “like” disappears - at least it does for me. Our mutual friends can still see my “like.” I can also no longer see who else “likes” his posts, even though I can still see the comments on them. It doesn’t seem that any of our mutual FB friends are having this problem - only me (I’ve checked with several of them) - and I am only having this issue with this one person, so I’m fairly certain it’s not a FB glitch. I thought I was pretty familiar with FB’s privacy settings, but this has got me completely baffled. How is it possible to prevent someone from seeing who “likes” your posts but not the posts themselves or who comments on them? Help!
There is a useful app on play store which looks good and updated all the time https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Mayartech.FacebookPrivacyGuide
Today I received a notification from FB that my account would be blocked if I continued inviting people to be friends that I didn’t know personally.
As a keen City Ville player, I belong to several groups dedicated to this game.
Numerous people in these groups put up messages asking to be added as friends, and these are the only people I have ever sent friend requests to that I don’t know.
Interestingly, I have just seen this statement in an article about Facebook privacy settings:
Who can send me friend requests?
The default here is Everyone, because Facebook wants your network of social interactions to grow. But if you want to limit requests, you can always change it to only allow Friends of friends to send you requests
there was a conversation I had with a friend and I noticed that they were able to somehow go through and delete the messages so that they are no longer showing on my end. When I read on FB it says that a person can delete the messages so that they no longer appear on your end, but the other party will still be able to see them and I have tested that out and it is true. BUT I know messages were erased from this conversation and the only thing I can think of is the person deleted them and then also unfriended me or unfriended me and then deleted the messages and it made them no longer appear on my end. Any help or clarification would be appreciated. Thank you.
I want to post something on an outside Facebook but want only this company to read and not any of my friends on my Facebook account how can I do this I was wondering if I set my settings to only me will this public Facebook I want to leave a msg on b able to c it
Hi Linda,
I’m not clear on what you’re asking. Do you want to post something on a company’s fan page and not want your friend’s to see it or is it something else?
Josh
From Niall Bolger on November 08, 2013 :: 12:09 pm
Hi Josh
I was checking what non friends can see on my facebook this AM and noticed that a lot of my photos are viewable to non friends.
Any post/picture I put up I always limit it to friends or to a certain group. These pictures have the note stating ‘allowed on timeline’ and are public….how is this the case?
What setting do I need to change to prevent everyone seeing these pictures in future and is there a way to change what friends/group can see them now?
Hopefully you can help
Regards
Niall
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