A private Facebook account is ideal for staying away from trespassers. It will hide your existence in the social network but connect you with the people you want.
People may have several reasons to make their social accounts private—keep a distance from unwanted contacts, conversations, etc. If a person is interested in maintaining existing relationships like family and close friends and doesn’t want to make new friends, he/she, too, may opt for a private account.
Creating a Facebook Private Account
In this post, we’ll tell you how to create a Facebook private account or make your existing Facebook profile private in easy-to-follow steps.
1. Limit friendship requests
Facebook is mainly used to find new friendships and recover lost ones. When starting a private account, you will try to build a network of as few people as possible. Right?
Let’s first see how that is possible. Facebook analyzes people’s locations, interests, and mutual friends and provides profiles that suit them as suggestions for friendship. As a result, even if you do not send requests to anyone, you will continue receiving friend requests from people in your vicinity or who know you.
To limit them, do as below,
Sign in to your Facebook account first. Click your profile picture from the top-right corner of your home screen and choose “Settings & Privacy” from the list.
Pick ‘Settings’ as next.
Visit Privacy options from the left sidebar.
Locate the ‘How people can find and contact you’ option in the main screen. By default, everyone on Facebook can send you friend requests. Click on edit that appears next to the ‘Who can send you friend requests?’ option. Change it to ‘Friends of friends’.
After that, only people in your friends’ friend list can send you connection requests. If you haven’t added any friends, no one else can send you a friend request. A Facebook account without friends can be a cloud storage vault to store your photos, videos, and notes. What do you think?
This option change won’t affect your existing Facebook friends. They will remain in your network until you remove them manually.
Still, there are many ways for people to find your Facebook account. Scroll down through the same page (Settings > Privacy) to prevent others from searching your account by phone number and email account.
- Who can see your friend list? — Set it as Only me, so others can’t spy on your network connections.
- Who can look you up using email address/phone number you provided—Only me. It prevents strangers from finding your Facebook profile and tracking social media activities with email or phone number.
- Do you want search engines outside Facebook to link to your profile? — No. Then, people can’t search for and find your Facebook through Google or similar search engines.
- Recommended similar profile—Off. As a result, Facebook won’t suggest your profile to others for sending friendship requests.
2. Manage your post visibility
Next, decide who can see your current and future content. It includes your status updates, photos, videos, and links you shared on the wall.
Facebook allows you to share posts with public, friends, custom friends, and custom friend lists. Let us compare them in detail,
Public—Anyone on Facebook
Friends— Your friend list
Friends except— All friends in your friend list except ‘XXX’
Specific friends— Friend ‘XXX’ and friend ‘YYY’
Only me— None. Best for creating personal notes.
Custom friends— Share with friend ‘XXX’ or lists and Don’t share with friend ‘YYY’ or lists
Custom lists—Share with custom friend lists like Acquaintances, close friends, best friends, etc.
These are the default audience options you can choose from. You can change it for individual posts (if needed) while creating and publishing a content.
Keep in mind that, the new setting is applicable to your future posts only. The old contents are still viewable by public or friends based on your previous setting. To apply the new setting to your old posts, click on ‘Limit Past Posts’ here, Limit the audience for posts you’ve shared with friends of friends or Public?.
As you are holding a private Facebook account, it is unnecessary to tell people about people, pages, and lists you follow. Go to the next option, Who can see the people, Pages and lists you follow?, and set it as ‘Only me’.
Read How to Find out Your Most Popular Tweets- Most Liked, Retweeted Tweets
3. Manage your profile and tagging
Head to your Profile and tagging section to control your timeline posts. People may post texts, photos, and even personal messages on your timeline wall.
If you want to stop friends from posting unwanted things, do this:
- Who can post on your profile? — Set it as Only me. It helps you to clean up your Facebook timeline and avoid appearing useless photos or birthday wishes there.
Scroll down to manage your tags. Under Reviewing, turn on toggle button for Review posts that you’re tagged in before the post appears on your profile. If someone tags you in their photos or posts, this option can stop them coming to your timeline before you even see them.
Similarly, enable the Review tags that people add to your posts before the tags appear on Facebook? option as well. Sometimes, people will tag their friends on your photos and videos without your permission. As a result, your posts that are shared only among friends visible to outsiders. So you should review tags before they appear on Facebook.
4. Hide your contact info
Adding a phone number and email address to your Facebook account is mandatory. Have you ever checked if others can see it?
Visit your Facebook profile and open About menu. Click Contact and basic info from the left sidebar. Then, it will show your phone number and email address in the main screen.
Tap the privacy icon (lock icon in the above-given screenshot) to change the privacy level for your number and email address. Select ‘Only me’ from the pop-up box.
Done.
5. Block users and messages
What if someone leaves unwanted comments on your posts or sends personal messages? You will block them. Isn’t it?
Facebook allows you to block users and their messages. After blocking, they can’t view your profile, pots, tags, and invite you to events or groups. Your Facebook activities will be totally invisible for them.
Go to Privacy settings (Settings > Privacy) and visit Blocking from the left sidebar. You can find out three blocking types there.
Restricted list: Add a friend to your restricted list. Thereafter, they can’t see your Facebook posts unless they are shared with the public.
Block users: Block a user entirely on Facebook. They can’t view your profile, see your posts, tag you, send invitations, and send messages.
Block messages: Block Messenger messages only.
Click on Edit and followed by ‘Add to Blocked list’. Search for people by their name and Facebook will show matching accounts as suggestions. Select an account to block him or her.
Go back to your previous screen (Edit > See your Blocked list) to manage your list of blocked users. It will show all blocked users on your Facebook account. Tap ‘Unblock’ to unblock them.
How to Remove a Facebook Friend?
To remove a current friend on Facebook, do this:
- Visit your Facebook profile and open your friend list.
- Click the ‘three-dots’ icon next to a friend’s name.
Find a friend whom you want to remove. Tap the ‘three-dots’ icon next to them. Select ‘Unfriend’. Confirm the change to remove a friend without knowing him or her.
Final thoughts
It is commonly said that there is no such thing as private on the Internet. Once a status update, photo, or video is posted anywhere, anyone can take a screenshot or download it.
Despite these facts, many people today use private Facebook accounts to communicate with a few people or to protect their privacy. You can successfully have a private Facebook profile if you don’t tag people outside your network.
A private Facebook account can help you use social media for your personal purposes and increase productivity without wasting time on unnecessary arguments.
