Facebook has fundamentally reshaped interpersonal communication and revolutionized how we share life updates with friends and family. However, the same open culture that facilitates staying connected can also make users vulnerable across multiple fronts.
As per Pew Research surveys, 74% of adult Facebook users have experienced some form of cyberbullying, harassment or unwanted contact attempts through the platform. This comprehensive guide covers all the tools and custom settings you need to make your Facebook profile rigorously private and secure.
Key Reasons Your Facebook Needs Stricter Privacy
Before diving into the step-by-step instructions, let‘s examine some of the major privacy risks posed by Facebook specifically:
Digital Stalking and Doxxing Dangers
With a public profile, any random stranger can access and screenshot your posts, photos, check-ins, and other activity on Facebook. This goldmine of personal data makes it far easier for determined stalkers, vengeful exes, and predatory scammers to track your location, daily habits, interests, and much more.
As per research from the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, over 53% of female Internet users in the US have been targets of online stalking or harassment. Disturbingly, nearly 63% of female stalking victims get confronted IRL after being initially stalked online.
Making Facebook ultra private limits the reconnaissance data available to anyone with nefarious intent, reducing your vulnerability to stalking, doxxing, or swatting.
Aggressive Ad Targeting and Manipulation
Facebook relentlessly collects every iota of data about you – pages you like, links you click, locations you check into – to profile your income, political leanings, shopping habits and much more. Why? To serve hyper-targeted ads designed explicitly to manipulate your purchases and beliefs.
As Timothy Snyder writes in The Road to Unfreedom, "The same technologies that create a more intense cacophony make citizens more susceptible to falsehoods crafted by the Kremlin or Breitbart [or ANY other bad actor]…the falsehoods spread faster than they can be disproved."
By locking down privacy levers, you can stem data flows fueling the worst advertising abuses and algorithmic rabbit holes.
Employer Snooping and Background Checks
Think only your close friends view your Facebook activity? Many employers now routinely scan social media to screen candidates during the interview process. Disturbingly, 70% of US hiring managers have rejected applicants based solely on their social profiles.
Risquephotos or controversial opinions that seem fine to share just with friends can torpedo your next big career move if surfaced publicly.
Physical Safety Threats
Posting upcoming vacation plans or checking into a faraway hotel might seem harmless. However, researchers have demonstrated how stalkers leverage social data to map physical locations and attack victims in the real world:
"In one chilling story, a woman was slain by an abusive ex-partner after he saw she’d checked into a hotel. Using the check-in notification, he was able to ascertain her room number at the hotel where he shot and killed her."
Making Facebook fully private limits these risks that extend beyond just virtual threats.
While no single solution can guarantee safety across all these fronts, rigorously restricting Facebook access through privacy settings significantly reduces your exposure and defends personal boundaries. Now let‘s get into the specifics of how to lock it down completely.
Step-by-Step Guide to Making Facebook Private
The good news is Facebook provides precise and granular controls to limit visibility and data gathering. The following eight settings allow you to methodically restrict what various categories of users can see or do.
Access the Facebook Privacy Checkup Dashboard
Facebook provides a single unified dashboard to review and modify all key privacy categories:
- Click the dropdown arrow in the top navbar and select Settings & privacy
- Scroll down and choose Privacy checkup to launch dashboard
This launches the privacy checkup tool with different options to update visibility permissions and data collection preferences.
Restrict Future Posts to Friends Only
By default, Facebook sets your post audience as public, allowing all 2.8 billion users to view and share anything you post. Here is how to make future posts visible to only confirmed friends:
- Under Who can see what you share? section, click Change next to Future Posts
- Select the Friends option to limit visibility going forward
This ensures only people in your friends list can see posts, photos, check-ins and other activity you share from now on.
Limit Old Posts to Friends Only
In addition to future posts, you likely have years of old posts still up on your Timeline by default visible to the public web. Here is how to retroactively make them private:
- In the Privacy Checkup tool, click Limit Old Posts below the audience selector
- Confirm Friends to remove public, friends-of-friends access
This will make all your previously public posts, images and updates viewable only going forward to confirmed friends.
Hide Your Entire Friends List
While limiting post visibility restricts content access, other users may still be able to browse your list of friends and followers. To hide it:
- Go to Privacy Checkup > Who Can See What You Share
- Under the Your Friends section, click Edit
- Select Only Me option
- Confirm change
This prevents anyone except you from accessing or searching your connections.
Allow Friend Requests Only From Friends-of-Friends
If your friend list is now fully private, you can also limit new connection requests:
- Access Privacy Checkup > How People Find You section
- Next to Who can send you friend requests?, click Edit
- Choose Friends of Friends to restrict requests
- Confirm setting change
Enabling this permits only people already connected to your friends to send you requests, reducing spam.
Make ALL Contact Info Entirely Private
To further minimize unsolicited outreach and doxxing risks:
- Go to Privacy Checkup > How People Find You
- Under contact info, click Edit next to Email, Phone number, Address fields
- For each item, select Only Me to completely hide
This removes your email, phone number, hometown, addresses and other contact information from public visibility.
Leverage Privacy Shortcuts Chrome Extension
Manually navigating through the privacy dashboard to tweak settings is tedious. Instead, you can use the Privacy Shortcuts Chrome extension to easily apply privacy best practices in one click:
Install it, grant permissions, then click various options like Make Timeline Private, Disable Facial Recognition etc. to instantly lock down those facets. Much simpler than manual clicks!
Conduct Regular Privacy Audits
Review your visibility settings every month using this checklist:
- Posts are set to Friends only
- Formerly public posts now limited
- Friends list hidden
- All contact info set to Only Me
- Facial recognition disabled
- Background location tracking off
- Data download confirms private fields
New features or policy changes can sometimes reset or share data publicly again, so periodic audits ensure previous work limiting exposure doesn‘t undo itself.
Verify Changes via Public Profile View
The final step is to validate changes you‘ve made show up from the perspective of non-friends searching your name. Here‘s how:
- Go to your profile page
- Click View As link in right sidebar
- Select Public option
This displays your profile as visible to general public searchers who aren‘t Facebook connections. Verify key personal info fields like photos, friends, check-ins now show as inaccessible or hidden from public access.
Advanced Privacy Precautions
The previous settings focus on locking down your main Facebook presence. However additional tools can further minimize tracking and data exposure:
Utilize Multi-Factor Authentication
Enabling 2FA introduces SMS or app verification to strengthen account security against password leaks and takeover attempts.
Create List of Close Friends
The Close Friends feature allows sharing posts, stories or updates visible only to your inner circle rather than all connections:
Use this to share personal moments just with those nearest and dearest.
Disable Location History and Background Collection
- Go to Settings & Privacy > Location
- Toggle off location history tracking
- Turn off background location collection for extra protection
This prevents Facebook from logging your movements and physical visits to stores etc. to further target advertising.
Remove Third-Party App Integrations
External sites and apps connected to your Facebook like Spotify, Instagram or Candy Crush can gather additional data from your activity. Prune unnecessary integrations via:
Settings > Apps and Websites > Remove suspicous permissions
Download Your Information Archive
You can download everything Facebook knows about you:
- Go to Settings > Your Facebook Information
- Click View link and enter password
- Select data categories like Posts, Ads, Friends etc.
- Request download
Scrutinize archive to understand Facebook‘s data holdings and delete anything unwanted.
Evaluate Using a VPN
A VPN routes your internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel, masking your IP address and location. This reduces tracking and fingerprinting by Facebook servers when accessing the site. Consider options like ProtonVPN or TunnelBear.
Facebook‘s Troubled Data Stewardship History
Developing world-class privacy controls only gets you so far if the underlying platform suffers from systemic data responsibility issues. Unfortunately, Facebook has a long track record of privacy violations:
- Researchers demonstrated Facebook likely violated 2011 FTC consent decree via lax Cambridge Analytica oversight
- Facebook paid $5 billion fine for deceiving users on how personal data was harvested and used
- In 2021, 533 million Facebook users had their phone numbers and personal data leaked online
- Researchers demonstrated Instagram shared data directly with Meta including email addresses and phone numbers
Facebook only engages in privacy enhancement when forced by regulators or public outrage rather than ethical concerns. This uneasy history offers little confidence to users seeking data minimization. Perhaps no amount of individual account lockdown can compensate for the platform‘s foundational disrespect of consent and boundaries.
Is a Private Account Right for You?
Facebook privacy controls empower you to selectively share with friends rather than the entire world. However, some aspects like audience selectors or friend list hiding reduce functionality like discovering new profiles or fostering engagement.
Ultimately, you have to decide based on personal priorities and threat models – do you value privacy and protection higher than overall user experience? Or perhaps certain facets like showing friends publicly but hiding contact info offers the right balance. Proceed cautiously and tweak settings until you land at your optimum mix of visibility versus security.
What privacy precautions or settings changes do you utilize across social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter? Do you maintain separate professional and private accounts? Share your perspective below!
