How to Make Your Facebook Private & Protect Your Privacy

As one of the most popular social networking sites, Facebook has more than 1.6 billion daily active users. On Facebook, you will make friends of all kinds: your middle school classmates, friend’s friend, and even the person who used to live in the same neighborhood.

In fact, Facebook is based on a vast amount of data from users. It has a long personal information list for you to fill out, including your hometown, education experience, work experience, and so on.

It’s risky to expose too much personal information on the Internet. Hence, this powerful social network indeed offers privacy settings to protect your personal information from the public.

However, not too many people know how to make your Facebook private.

In this article, I will focus on how to make everything private on Facebook, including FB profile, page, photos, friend list, etc. ( Click here to donwload private video from Facebook)

It’s easier than you thought!

Part 1. How to Make Your Facebook Profile Private?

Generally, we can limit access to our personal information by Facebook’s privacy settings.

The entry to privacy settings locates on your Facebook home page. Facebook offers a privacy check at the beginning of the settings since there are so many items that you can make changes to. You can run the privacy check to find which part you want to make private simply.

How to Make Facebook Private on Computer

1. Visit the Facebook website, and you can find the “Settings & Privacy” in the menu by clicking the small triangle on the top right corner.
2. Click “Privacy Checkup.”
3. You will see the page displays 5 different topics. You can select the one you want to begin with. For example, let’s click on “Who Can See What You Share.”
4. You will see the list of settings you can adjust in this part. Click Continue to start.
5. Now you can make your Facebook profile private. For each item of your personal information, you can select audiences from Public, Friends of Friends, Friends, to Only me & Custom. If you want to make your Facebook private to non-friends, please select audiences between Friends and Only me.
6. You can move forwards or backwards between different tabs. After you feel happy with your settings, click Review Another Topic.

After you finish all the settings in these 5 topics, your account is shielded by basic privacy protection. If you still feel not secure enough, you can also hide your Facebook profile.

How to Make Facebook Private on Your Phone

Most of us use the Facebook app frequently on mobile phones.

However, how to make Facebook private on mobile?

In this part, I am going to show you how to make your Facebook private on your Android phone. Follow similar steps, and you can also make your Facebook private on your iPhone.

1. Open the Facebook app on your phone, and log in to your account.
2. Tap the menu icon, which has three short lines. Tap Privacy shortcuts.
3. You will see 5 tabs that enables you to manage your privacy and security settings on Facebook. Under the Privacy tab, the most important thing is starting with any topic.
4. Run through all the 5 tabs and make sure you are satisfied with these settings.

How to Hide Facebook Profile

Besides making your Facebook private, you can even hide the profile. How to hide a Facebook profile? Here I will take an example of how to hide a Facebook profile on the web.

1. On the Facebook website, click the triangle drop-down icon on the right side, then select “Settings & Privacy” > “Settings.”
2. Choose “Profile and Tagging” from the left tab, and you can edit items for 3 sections – “Viewing and Sharing,” “Tagging,” “Reviewing.” Choose Only me or Off for each entry.
3. Go to “Location” on the left tab and hide your “Location History.”

On top of it, there are lots of privacy items that will make you invisible on Facebook. I am not going to illustrate it in detail. Test them out yourself.

Part 2. How to Make Your Facebook Page Private?

Many users are curious about how to make my Facebook page private. Here come the steps.

1. On the Facebook website, click the first triangle drop-down menu at the left side, choose “Settings & Privacy,” and further select “Settings.”
2. Click “Privacy” on the left section, and you can make your Facebook Page private with the options “Your Activity,” “How People Find and Contact You,” and “How You Get Message Requests.”
3. With the “Your Activity” option, you can decide who can see your future post. Click Edit nearby, and you can choose from Friends, Friends except, Only me, Specific friends, etc., with the pull-down icon.
   • Besides that, you can limit your past posts. Facebook allows you to limit all of them in one go. After you limit the past posts, only your friends can see them. However, the one who was tagged in the post and their friends can also see the post. You can see your friends’ private photos and videos even if they make the post private. If you want your past posts more private, you might need to limit a specific post’s audience.
4. Under the “How People Find and Contact You” item, you can hide your friends list and make yourself unsearchable on Facebook.
   • Click the Edit icon next to “Who can see your friends list?” and choose Only me to hide your friends list.
   • If you want to be unsearchable on Facebook, select “Only me” – for these 2 questions – “Who can look you up using the email address you provided?” & “Who can look you up using the phone number you provided?” Then hit the Edit icon next to the option “Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?” and uncheck the box underneath.

Part 3. How to Hide Birthday on Facebook?

Many users wish to hide their birthday on Facebook but fail to find the tricks. Now let me show you the guide on how to hide your birthday on Facebook.

1. On the Facebook website, go to your profile, click “Edit Profile,” and scroll down, and further choose “Edit Your About Info.”
2. Hit “Contact and Basic info” on the left tab. Then you can find your birthday info at the bottom of this section.
3. Click the small round icon next to your birthday info and choose Only me to hide your birthday on Facebook. You can also make your birthday private on Facebook with the options such as “Friends,” “Friends of Friends,” or “Custom.”

Part 4. How to Make Your Friends List Private on Facebook?

Many users show their concerns about how to make Facebook friends private. Here I will offer 2 ways to hide the friends list on Facebook here.

First solution:

1. Go to Facebook website > Settings & Privacy > Settings > Privacy.
2. Scroll down and find the “Who can see your friends list” item. Click the Edit icon nearby and make your choice.

Second solution:

1. Go to your Facebook profile page, and click the Friends tab.
2. Click the ellipsis icon next to “Find Friend” to Edit Privacy.
3. Select the audience that could view your Friend List.

It is easy, right?

Part 5. How to Make Photos Private on Facebook?

Many of us get used to sharing photos on Facebook. Yet there are some pictures that we don’t want everyone to view. In such as case, you can hide photos on Facebook with only a few clicks.

1. Go to your profile page. Click the Photos tab.
2. Choose Albums.
3. Click the top right corner of an album, then choose Edit Album. You can change who can view the album in this way. If you want to make the album private, just change the audience to Only Me.

With similar steps, you can also make your Facebook video private as well. If you want to download these private Facebook videos, you can go to AmoyShare Facebook video downloader, or turn to our latest guide on how to download private Facebook videos.

Part 6. How to Hide Active Status on Facebook Messenger?

If you don’t want your friends and contacts to know that you are active recently, you can turn the Activity Status off. That is a good way to hide your online status on Facebook Messenger.

Run the Facebook Messenger app, and tap your profile picture. Then you will see “Active Status.” Tap it and toggle off the icon next to “Show when you’re active.”

Besides that, you can make your Facebook Messenger private as well.

Go to Facebook Messenger app on your mobile phone, and tap your avatar. Scroll down, and you will find the “Privacy” option, press it. Then you can make your Facebook Messenger private by changing the default settings of Messenger Delivery, Secrete Conversations, Blocked Accounts, Story Audience and Muted Stories.

Part 7. How to Make a Private Event on Facebook?

It is for you to make a private event on Facebook.

1. On the Facebook website, click the + icon and choose the Event option.
2. Choose event type between “Online” and “In person.”
3. Now you can fill out the event details. On the left section, you can choose who can see and join this event. If you want to make a Facebook event private, please select “Private,” “Public,” “Friends,” or “Group” instead of “Public.”

Many users have asked for tips on how do I change a Facebook event from private to public. It is a pity that Facebook does not allow us to make a private event public now. Therefore, you need to think twice before selecting the event participants.

Conclusion

Facebook provides users with detailed privacy options. You can make your profile, photos, activity status private and hide your birthday and friends list.

Following the steps above, I think you will learn how to make your Facebook private.

Test them out now!

Frequently Asked Questions