Protect Your Personal Data on Facebook: A Guide to Privacy Settings

Nowadays, protecting your Facebook privacy settings is more crucial than ever. Instead of deleting your Facebook account, you can make it more difficult for others to access your information by imposing strict privacy settings.

Many people have asked how they can keep their Facebook profile private. Why? Some people indeed have no interest in joining Facebook, but they still want to participate in groups or check in on loved ones’ whereabouts.

Facebook’s privacy and security features have greatly improved since its infancy. Thanks to them, our data and privacy are in much safer hands than ever. However, some might argue that they provide too much freedom, as the resulting system is too complex for the average user.

That’s why I decided to pen this piece. The book’s intended audience consists of people who aren’t particularly interested in joining Facebook… but they:

• Keep an online presence (a page or a group) in order on Facebook
• Join an online community or group on Facebook.
• Stick with the updates of select loved ones
• It’s also for those with legitimate security concerns about Facebook but who would like to use the service anyway.

I find Facebook to be handy, but I can appreciate the worries. I haven’t taken nearly as many precautions with my Facebook account as recommended here. On the other hand, if you decide to go through with it, I’d like to make it as simple as possible for you.

Modifying your Facebook privacy settings

You can safeguard your Facebook account by adjusting your privacy settings for convenience and peace of mind. The following are some steps to help you get started with your transformation:

Open your Facebook account

• Type your Facebook search in the search bar. Next, enter your username and password to log in to Facebook. If you forget your password, click the “forgot password” link. A new password will be sent to your email box.

Click the top right corner arrow to move your feed up or down

• After you find your news feed, click the down-pointing arrow in the top right corner of the screen. If you click the arrow, a menu of options will appear that you can use to see your activity log, customize your news feed, change your settings, or log out. Click on the Settings tab to change the settings.

To get to the section about your personal information, click the link in the left column

• If you click “Settings,” you’ll be on your profile page, where you can change your account settings. Select Privacy from the General section on the left side of the screen. This would be the fourth choice. Click on the Privacy tab, and a new window will open on the right side of your screen with personal information like your name, username, and contact details.

Just go to “Your Activity” and look!

• Find the “Your Activity” section near the bottom of the page when you’re in your profile’s Privacy settings. It should be the second subheading under “Privacy Settings and Tools.”

• This section makes it easy to change who can see your profile. By choosing “Only me,” you can make your profile invisible to everyone but yourself. Use the “Friends Only” setting if you don’t want strangers to see your profile information.

Check out your other options for security

• Under the Privacy tab, you can change who can send you friend requests, who can look you up using your Facebook email address or phone number, and whether or not search engines can tag your Facebook profile, among other things. Check out all the options on this page to ensure your Facebook privacy settings are just how you want them.

• Under the “Timeline and Tagging” heading in the sidebar, you can find more ways to make your Facebook profile private. Here, you can control who can post on your timeline, who can see your Facebook stories, who can see your tagged posts, and who can see your timeline in general.

How to make your Contact section private?

• You can’t stop people from adding you as a friend, but you can restrict requests to “friends of friends.” It effectively prevents strangers from sending you friend requests on Facebook if you don’t already have any friends there.

• Modify the “Who can contact me?” setting to “friends of friends” by clicking the edit button.

How to avoid being looked up to?

• As long as you’ve linked your email address to Facebook, it’s simple for others to track you down. However, to protect your privacy, you should avoid using your primary email address for Facebook and instead create a new one specifically for the purpose.

• If you’re still worried, you can limit who can use your email address to find you on Facebook to just your friends. You’re good to go if you already have a connection with them; otherwise, strangers won’t be able to track you down. The same holds for your email address: nobody can find you if you don’t have any Facebook friends.

• In the “Who can look you up using the email address you provided?” section, click the “edit” button. After that, select “Friends”:

Manage your timeline and tagging

• You may want to manage who can add content to your timeline and if you’ll accept tags. Stop using any of those if you value your privacy.

• In the drop-down menu, select “Timeline and Tagging.”

Further timeline settings

You should now go through the following settings and set them as safe as possible.

The following people can see my timeline:

• Can other people see when a post on your Timeline mentions you? – Change the word “only” to “only me.”
• Can other people see the things you share on your Timeline? “only” should be “I.”
• How do I put the tags that others make and the tags that others suggest in the right place?
• Do you look at other people’s tags on your Facebook posts before they go live? – Set the button to “on.”
• When someone tags you in a post, they might ask, “Who else should see this?” “only” should be “I.”
• Who can see the suggested tags when a picture of you is uploaded? “only” should be “I.”

Put a stop to people posting on your timeline

Click “edit” next to “Who can post to your timeline” to restrict who can add updates to your profile. Replace “I” with “Only I”

Safeguard your profile by locking it

We’re almost there, but we might change a few settings. Even if you never plan on adding friends or changing your profile, it’s a good idea to read this and make sure everything is to your satisfaction.

• You can make changes to your profile by selecting “about” from the drop-down menu that appears when you click your name in the top bar.

If you just signed up for Facebook, this section will only contain your name and birthdate. Unless you change your settings, Facebook will assume that you want to share all of your content with your friends.

• You’ll have to go through everything and manually change it to “only me” if you want to keep it secret.

What I mean is, let me give you some examples,

Basic information

• Use the “contact and basic info” link on the left side of the page. To change any of these details, simply select the corresponding edit button (this will be hidden until you hover over the line). Next, select “Only Me,” and “Save Changes” from the privacy menu.

Here are some other details about yourself that you probably shouldn’t make public.

• Where you’ve worked and gone to school
• Mobile phone
• Electronic mail
• Birth Date

Managing your friend list

By default, everyone will be able to see who your friends are. Go to the “Friends” section of your profile and click the “Edit” button to make these changes (the pencil icon in the top right).

After that, you can change the setting for “Who can see your friend list?” to “Only Me,” which is the answer to “Who can see the people you follow?” Then you can click “Done” to finish.

All done!

You can consider this task completed. A word of caution, though: your Facebook activity will never be completely hidden from prying eyes. That’s not why people join social networks, and it wasn’t why the Internet was created. Nevertheless, if you follow the advice in this article, limit the information you share with Facebook, and watch what you post, you can keep your profile as secure as possible.