The complete guide to Facebook Privacy settings

Privacy is paramount, but when it comes to Facebook privacy is paramount in its superlative form. With continuous demands from the government and public alike, Facebook has made managing your Facebook privacy easier. And here is the step-by-step guide to Facebook privacy settings:

What are Facebook Privacy Settings?

You have to be logged in to Facebook throughout the entire guide. So, now click on the question mark at the top right corner of whatever page you are on and then select the option of ‘privacy checkup’. It is a walkthrough by Facebook which gives you a picture of how your current privacy setting looks like.

Post Privacy

start with the posts section, start by checking your setting of default sharing. It is recommended that you keep this to ‘friends’ all the time. Public posts can be seen by everyone off and on Facebook. But if you are a celebrity, you might want to keep the option public.

The friends set has a few variations too. Click on the custom option to see them. Facebook gives you the option of hiding your posts from certain friends or only showing it to a selected group of people.

You can also hide posts according to some selected criteria too like you can hide your posts from your office friends but might want to share it with college friends, you get options to do all that here.

Apps Privacy

This part of the tool shows all the permissions you have given to different apps over the time you have used Facebook. These settings also show you the people who can see the list of apps you installed. You can delete the apps by simply clicking on the cross sign near that app.

Profile Privacy

In this section, you can see all the privacy settings that are on your email addresses, hometowns, birthdays, and other personal details of your life. You can always change the audience who can view this information. On options like a birthday, you can also control the amount of information anyone can see.

Advanced Facebook Privacy Settings

In this option, you can see who can see what you are doing on Facebook. To get to the advanced privacy settings tab, click on settings and then click on the privacy option.

Who Can See My Stuff

Who can see your future posts: same as ‘your posts’ section

Review all the posts you are tagged in: go to the activity log page and select the option ‘posts you are tagged in’, then press photos and photos of you to see where you have been tagged until now. Click on the drop-down arrow on the left of the post to remove the tag. 

Review your other activity on Facebook: so, while you were reviewing your tagged posts, you must have seen a more option, click on that and see what you’ve been up to while you were active on Facebook.

Limit the audience of your old posts: remember whatever settings you select from here, it will change your previously selected privacy settings

Facebook Live: Public, Friends or Private?

If you go live on Facebook then the default setting is the same as your regular posts. However, you can always change it. So, click on the status update tab and click on the little video icon.

If you are doing this for the first time then you will need to give Facebook permission to access your microphone and camera. Below your name and profile picture, you will see the settings. Tap on it and edit the audience according to your preferences.

Who can contact me

This means who can send you friend requests and frankly until you change it, everyone can. But you don’t really have many choices when it comes to this.

Who can look me up

Using the email address: anyone who has it can contact you. If you don’t want then change it to friends or friends of friends.

Using mobile number: same as email address

Do you want search engines to link to your timeline: you might want to turn it off, but the information you have set to public is available for others to see.

Timeline and Tagging Options on Facebook

• From this option, you can control who can view your timeline and tag you to posts.
• Who can add things to my timeline: It is set to friends, by default but the only other option to select is yourself.
• If you are worried about who can tag you into their posts, then you can change this by clicking on ‘review posts friends tag you in before they appear in your timeline’.
• Who can see things on my timeline: on your profile, you can click on ‘view as’ option to see this.
• How can I manage tags people add and tagging suggestions: you can review tags people add to your posts, even before they are made live on Facebook. You will be informed about the tag via notification.
• You are also given the option to add the audience if you are tagged into it, plus, there is also an option to control who can see you when the photos of that like you are uploaded.

Manage to Block

1. Restricted list: this is the option you select when you don’t want to block someone but at the same time you don’t want them to see your personal information. They can only see your public information.

2. Block users: just go ahead and block someone if you want to. However, this won’t stop them from interacting with you in apps or games or groups.

3. Block messages: using the messenger app, you can simply block someone from sending messages to you.

4. Block app invites: you can also block invites from other apps, a user-to-user basis.

5. Block event invites: type the name of the person you want to blog in this section and stop them from sending you invites of an event.

6. Block apps: you can also remove the apps you don’t want to be in touch with anymore.

7. Block pages: you can block pages here and when you do that, that other page is unliked and unfollowed.

Customize Facebook App Privacy

Here you can control all the apps where you have logged in using Facebook.

1. App settings: click on the app to see how much information the app is using and then change it accordingly.

2. Apps, websites and platforms: Facebook platform enables third-parties to collect your information, in this option you can change it

3. Apps others use: when your Facebook friend uses some apps via Facebook then that app can access your public information as well. If you are uncomfortable with it, you can change it here.

In conclusion

This has covered almost all privacy settings Facebook provides. If you want deeper information, then you can visit this article.