How to Make Your Facebook Profile Private

Updated on Jul 1, 2022. Social networks like Facebook tend to make money by invading your privacy on the most basic level. However, along with the networks themselves, you’ll also want to be sure that your info is kept private from other users. In today’s guide here at PinpointVPN, we’re not going to discuss the virtues of a VPN like IPVanish, rather, we’ll explore how you can make your Facebook profile private.

Reasons to Make Your Facebook Profile Private

There are a few reasons why you’d want to ensure that your Facebook profile is set to private. First and foremost, having a private profile means that you can enjoy Facebook and retain a modicum of privacy without having to delete your account in its entirety, since it could be useful in some ways.

For example, many people communicate using Facebook Messenger, and giving up the ability to seamlessly interact with friends and family seems like a bit of a steep price to pay so that you can remain private. This is where your privacy settings come into play and allow you to stay on Facebook.

However, one thing that you’ll need to consider is that setting your account to private won’t solve all of the privacy concerns involved in using Facebook. For example, while other users won’t be able to see your details when your account is set to private, that’s not the case for Facebook itself.

Facebook will still be able to collect all of the info they want about you and you have no say in the matter due to their extremely invasive privacy policy. If you want to limit the amount of info that Facebook collects about you, then you’re better off deactivating or deleting your Facebook account.

Making Your Facebook Profile Private

Here are the steps involved in making your Facebook profile private:

Start off by logging into Facebook on your desktop computer.
Head to the arrow at the top right corner of the page once you’re logged into Facebook.
After that, click the “Settings & Privacy” option and you’ll be brought to a page where you can alter your privacy settings.
Click on “Privacy Checkup” if you want to go through a guided version of altering your privacy settings. Otherwise, click the link to your settings at the bottom of this page and you’ll be brought to the Facebook settings menu.
On the menu on the left side of your screen, you’ll see a range of settings. Click the “Privacy” option.
Go to “Your Activity” and change the setting to “Only Me.” This will ensure that nobody else can find your profile on Facebook. Keep in mind that there are other privacy settings that you can adjust, as well.
If you don’t want people sending you friend requests on Facebook, you can head to the “How People Contact and Find You” section of your privacy menu. You can then change who can send you friend requests from “Everyone” to just “Friends of Friends.”
In the “Timeline and Tagging” section of your privacy settings, you can also change who can post to your timeline and who can tag you in posts. If you want to ensure that nobody else can see you on Facebook, we’d recommend disabling both of these features so that you don’t get caught up in other people’s posts.

Keep in mind that there are plenty of other privacy features that you’ll find on this part of the settings page, and going through them one by one will ensure that your activity on Facebook is as private as possible. Let’s take a look at some other ways to enhance your privacy on the platform.

Making Your Facebook Photos Private

One of the best ways to determine who can see what photos you’re posting on Facebook is by dividing your posted photos into albums. This will give you more granular control over what people can see and it will ensure that you can still share photos with your friends without making everything you do public.

The first step is to organize photos that you post into albums instead of posting them individually. If you only post single pictures to Facebook, you’ll end up having to go through each photo manually to ensure that people can’t see everything you’ve posted, whereas it’s a lot less work to deem pictures suitable for public viewing through albums.

Once you have your photos arranged into albums, here’s what you’ll have to do to adjust who can and who can’t see them:

Start off by heading to the photo album that you’d like to adjust the privacy settings for.
Click on the “More” option at the corner of the photo album that looks like three little dots.
Go to the privacy section of the album settings and open the dropdown menu. From this menu, you’ll be able to select whether an album is open to public viewing, just your friends, or even a select number of friends. The final option is to make an album only visible to you, which will protect your privacy the most.

Making Your Facebook Friends List Private

In the same privacy tab that we mentioned earlier, you can also adjust who can see your friends list. This will allow you to limit the number of people who can tell who you’re connected to, which is often a major privacy concern for people who want to limit their interactions with strangers on Facebook.

Here are the steps involved in making your Facebook friends list private:

Head to the privacy tab of the settings menu using the steps that we outlined earlier.
Head to the “How People Find and Contact You” section of the privacy options.
Go to the dropdown menu next to the “Who Can See Your Friends List?” option.
Using this dropdown menu, you’ll be able to choose between keeping your friends list public, making it so that only your friends can see it, choosing friends who can see it with exceptions, or changing it to the “Only Me” setting.