What "completely private" actually means on Facebook
Facebook does not have a single "make private" button that locks down everything at once. Instead, you control privacy in separate places: who sees your posts, who can find your profile, who can message you, and what information appears on your profile itself. Making your account "completely private" means adjusting all of these settings so that only people you approve can see your activity and contact you.
The default Facebook setup shares far more than most people realize. Your posts go to "Friends" by default, but your profile photo, cover photo, and basic info are visible to anyone on the internet. Your name appears in search results. Strangers can send you friend requests and messages. If you want real privacy, you need to change these defaults one section at a time.
Key Takeaways
- Change your post audience from "Friends" to "Only Me" or "Friends" depending on what you want to share, and review past posts to limit who saw them.
- Turn off search visibility so your profile does not appear when people search for your name on Facebook or in search engines.
- Restrict who can message you by limiting messages to friends only and filtering requests from non-friends into a separate folder.
- Lock down your profile information by hiding your phone number, email, birthday, and relationship status from public view.
- Review and remove old photos, posts, and tagged content that may have been shared with a wider audience before you changed your settings.
Hide your profile from search and discovery
The fastest way to stop strangers from finding you is to turn off search visibility. On Facebook's mobile app, go to Settings & Privacy, then Settings. Scroll to Audience and Visibility and tap "Who can look you up?" Turn off both "Allow people to search for you using the phone number you provided" and "Allow people to search for you using the email address you provided." These settings prevent your profile from appearing when someone searches your name or phone number on Facebook.
Next, find "Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?" and turn that off too. This stops Google, Bing, and other search engines from indexing your Facebook profile, so your profile will not appear in regular web search results. On desktop, these same settings are in Settings & Privacy > Settings > Audience and Visibility. The exact wording changes slightly between mobile and desktop, but the options are in the same place.
Change who can see your posts and profile information
Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Privacy. Look for "Who can see your posts?" and change it from "Friends" to "Only Me" if you want complete privacy, or keep it at "Friends" if you want your actual friends to see what you share. This setting controls all future posts you make. However, it does not change posts you made before you adjusted this setting — those keep their original audience unless you edit them individually.
In the same Privacy section, find "Who can see your friends list?" and change it to "Only Me." Then find "Who can contact you?" and set it to "Friends only." This prevents strangers from sending you messages and hides your friends list from people who are not your friends. You can also control who sees your email, phone number, and birthday by going to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Personal Information and adjusting each field's visibility to "Only Me."
Review and limit past posts and tagged photos
Your old posts may have been shared with "Friends" or "Public" before you changed your privacy settings. Facebook does not automatically update the audience on old posts when you change your default. You need to review them manually or use the "Limit Past Posts" tool. In Settings & Privacy > Settings > Privacy, scroll down and tap "Limit Past Posts." This changes all posts you made before that moment to "Friends only," which is a faster way to handle years of old content at once.
After you use Limit Past Posts, check your photos and tagged content. Go to your profile, tap the three dots menu, and select "Photos." Look for any photos you uploaded or were tagged in that show more information than you want visible. Tap each photo, then tap the audience icon (the circle with people in it) and change who can see it. You can also untag yourself from photos by opening the photo, tapping the three dots, and selecting "Report photo" or "Remove tag," depending on whether you uploaded it or someone else did.
Control who can send you friend requests and messages
Even with privacy settings on, strangers can still send you friend requests and messages by default. To stop this, go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Privacy and find "Who can send you friend requests?" Change it to "Friends of friends" or "Friends only" depending on how restrictive you want to be. "Friends only" means only people who are already your friends can send requests, which is the most private option.
For messages, find "Who can message you?" in the same section and set it to "Friends only." This means only your friends can send you direct messages; requests from non-friends go to a separate "Message Requests" folder that you can ignore. You can also turn off message notifications from non-friends so you do not see requests pop up on your phone. Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Notifications and find "Message Requests" to adjust how you are notified.
Lock down your profile information and activity status
Your profile information — birthday, relationship status, work history, education — is visible to different audiences by default. Go to your profile, tap the three dots menu, and select "Edit profile." For each field (birthday, relationship status, work, education, hometown), tap the audience icon next to it and change it to "Only Me." This hides all that information from everyone except you. You can also remove information entirely by deleting the text in that field.
Turn off your activity status so people cannot see when you were last active on Facebook. Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Privacy and find "Who can see your active status?" Change it to "Only Me." This prevents friends and strangers from knowing whether you are currently online or when you last used the app. If you want to hide your activity status from specific people while keeping it visible to others, you can customize this by tapping the option and selecting individual friends to exclude.
Review app permissions and connected accounts
Third-party apps and websites can access your Facebook data if you have connected them to your account. Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Apps and Websites. Look at "Active apps and websites" and review what each one can see. If you do not recognize an app or no longer use it, click it and select "Remove." This disconnects the app from your Facebook account and stops it from accessing your data.
Also check "Expired apps" to see apps you connected in the past that are no longer active. Remove any you do not want connected. If you use Facebook Login to sign into other websites (like Spotify or Instagram), those connections are listed here too. You can remove them if you want to stop sharing your Facebook data with those sites, though you may need to create a separate password for those accounts afterward.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I make my Facebook profile completely invisible to everyone?
No, you cannot make your profile completely invisible because Facebook needs to show your name and profile photo to your friends. However, you can hide your profile from search, limit who can message you, and set all your posts to "Only Me" so that only you can see your activity. Your friends will still see you in their friends list.
If I set my posts to "Only Me," can my friends still see them?
No. "Only Me" means only you can see the post. If you want your friends to see posts but no one else, set the audience to "Friends." You can change the audience on individual posts after you post them by tapping the audience icon on that post.
What happens to old posts when I change my privacy settings?
Old posts keep their original audience setting unless you change them. Use "Limit Past Posts" in Settings > Privacy to change all past posts to "Friends only" at once. For more control, review individual posts on your profile and change their audience manually.
Can people still find me on Facebook if I turn off search visibility?
People who are already your friends will still see you in their friends list. However, new people searching for your name on Facebook or in Google will not find your profile. If someone has your direct profile link, they can still visit it, but they will see limited information based on your privacy settings.
Do I need to delete my account to have complete privacy?
No. Adjusting all the settings described here — search visibility, post audience, message restrictions, and profile information — gives you the same practical privacy as a deleted account without losing access to your account. Deletion is permanent and takes 30 days to complete, so privacy settings are usually the better choice.