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How to make your profile private on Facebook
In This Article
Looking to boost your Facebook profile’s privacy settings? Here is the simplest way to make your Facebook profile private.
It’s important to make sure that you are comfortable on social media, and sometimes that comfort can come from knowing that people you don’t know aren’t looking at your profile.
And that can go a step further, you may want a Facebook account just so you can check in with funny pages and see what your local news looks like, and you may prefer it if no one could access your profile.
And it’s surprisingly easy to make your Facebook account private, it only takes a few simple steps. Keep reading to find out the easiest way to make your Facebook profile private.
What we used
The Short Version
Step1
Open Facebook
Open up Facebook on your device and make sure you are logged into your account.
Step2
Click on the Menu button
Click on the small arrow that sits in the top right-hand corner, it is near the profile button.
Step3
Press Settings and privacy
Once you have clicked on the small arrow, from the drop-down menu select Settings and privacy.
Step4
Click Settings
Choose Settings from the new drop-down menu to continue the process.
Step5
Click Privacy
Once you choose Settings, you will be taken to a new page. To come out of General, go to the left-hand side of the page and from the menu click on Privacy.
Step6
Press the Edit button
Now you are in the Privacy menu, you can edit your privacy settings. We chose to alter the settings that affect the number of people who can see your activity, however, you can also follow these steps for the other privacy options on this page, such as who can send you friend requests, who can look you up, and who can see who you follow. Once you have chosen which settings you want to make private, click on the small blue Edit button that sits on the right side of the menu.
Step7
Click the box
Depending on what your privacy settings already are, your small box may say something different. Ours says Public, but yours may say something else, such as Friends of friends. No matter what the box says, click on it to continue the process.
Step8
Choose More
Click on the More button at the bottom of the drop-down menu to access more settings.
Step9
Click Only me
Click the Only me option to ensure that only you can see these settings. Repeat steps six to nine on all the privacy settings that you want no one else to view or access.
Troubleshooting
Our guide shows you how to make your activity private, however, you can use this method to get to your Privacy settings and then make everything on your profile private, including who can see your page, who can see your friends list and many more. You can make as many options as possible private if you want to.
The number of people that will be able to interact or even see your Facebook account will depend on how many settings you set to ‘Only me’. If you remove yourself from the search engine it will make it harder for people to find your Facebook account.
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Gemma joined Trusted Reviews as a staff writer after graduating from Leeds Beckett University with a Journalism degree. She’s worked with national outlets, covering breaking news stories to reviews fo…
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Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
