How to make your facebook profile completely private

With so much personal information available on Facebook, including birthdays, jobs and family updates, it’s no surprise you don’t want all of your information shared with the world. When you want to exercise more control of what other Facebook users see, especially those who are not your friends, it’s incredibly easy to do. Follow these few steps to make your Facebook private.

How to Make Your Facebook Profile Private

To start moving your profile toward complete privacy, make sure all of your posts are limited to being viewable to just your friends.

1. Log in to your account and select the drop-down arrow in the upper-right corner of the Facebook screen. As the drop-down menu appears, select “Settings & Privacy,” then choose “Settings” again. When the Settings screen appears, look on the left side and locate and click the option for “Privacy.”

David Joz

David is a freelance tech writer with over 15 years of experience in the tech industry. He loves all things Nintendo.

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As of 2022's first quarter, Facebook was the most-used online social network worldwide, boasting approximately 2.93 billion users around the globe, according to Statista. Facebook is even the top platform which American users spent the most time per day in 2021. 

The social media site has become a hub for users to connect with family, friends and colleagues. However, with that many users on the platform, it could be easy for just about anyone to find your account. 

If you want to secure your account, here is how to make yourself as private as possible on Facebook. 

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How to make Facebook private

There are several options for privacy and who can view your Facebook profile and posts, including: 

• Public: "Anyone on or off Facebook." 
• Friends: "Your friends on Facebook."
• Friends except: "Don't show to some friends." 
• Specific friends: "Only show to some friends." 
• Only me

If you want to change your privacy settings on Facebook, on a desktop select your account icon, and go to the option "Settings & privacy." Select "Settings," then "Privacy."

From there, you can chose what of your content is visible to whom. You can switch your activity for who can see your future posts, who can see the people, pages and lists you follow and who can see your friends lists, among other options. 

To change the privacy settings, select "Edit" to the right of the option, and choose the privacy option in the drop-menu of who can view. 

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How do I remove my Facebook from search engines?

To stop your Facebook account from surfacing on search engines (such as Google or Yahoo) outside of Facebook, go into your "Settings & privacy" on a desktop and select "Settings" then "Privacy."

Scroll to the subsection, "How people can find and contact you." Go to the option, "Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile" and select "Edit." 

If this option is left on, "search engines may link to your profile in their results," says Facebook. If this setting is off, search engines will stop linking your account. However, your profile can still be found through Facebook search. 

Deselect the box next to "Allow search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile" to confirm your profile removal from search engines.