Facebook privacy settings: Make your Facebook profile unsearchable

Ever searched for your name on Facebook? It’s shockingly easy to find your profile online. That usually leads to the question: How do I make my Facebook profile unsearchable? The good news? Facebook has privacy settings to hide your profile from search.

Privacy-conscious users often want to remain invisible in Facebook search results. Whether you’re a professional, an influencer, or someone who values privacy, it’s crucial to know how to manage your visibility. In this guide, we’ll show you how to make your Facebook profile unsearchable, step-by-step.

Ready to dive into the How People Find and Contact You section in Facebook’s Audience and Visibility settings? Let’s hide your profile.

Quick Tips: Improve Facebook privacy settings in 5 minutes

Want to protect yourself as quickly as possible. Here is a table with our top-recommended privacy setting updates:

We’ve included mobile-friendly steps later in this guide. These will help you update your Facebook privacy settings on either an iPhone or an Android device.

How to make your Facebook profile unsearchable

In a rush to hide your Facebook profile? Follow the steps below to make your Facebook profile unsearchable.

1. Go to Facebook’s Privacy Checkup Tool: Click your profile photo in the top-right corner of Facebook. From the dropdown menu, select Settings & privacy, then choose Privacy Checkup.
2. Adjust who can see your content: Select Who can see what you share. This section lets you control who sees your posts, profile details, and friends list. You can also block unwanted users.
3. Limit how people can find you on Facebook: Next, click on How people can find you on Facebook.
4. Stop people from finding you by email or phone number: Update the options to prevent strangers from finding your profile by name, email address, or phone number.
5. Stop yourself from appearing in Google search: Users wanting to make their Facebook profile unsearchable can also disable search engine indexing. Turn off the option that allows external search engines to link to your profile:
6. Lock your Facebook profile for extra privacy: To lock down your entire profile, go back to Settings & privacy, then tap Audience and visibility. Now, choose Lock Profile. This feature hides most of your profile details from non-friends and limits visibility of posts, photos, and activity.

Please note that step 6 (Lock Profile) is only available in certain regions. If you are in the US, the UK, Canada, or most of Europe, you will not see this setting because Facebook has not rolled it out globally yet. Lock Profile is available in:

• India
• Bangladesh
• Pakistan
• Some countries in the Middle East and Southeast Asia

What can I do instead of Lock Profile? 

If Lock Profile isn’t available in your region, you can use a VPN to change your region to India or another country where the feature is currently available. You can learn about the best VPNs for Facebook by following the link.

Alternatively, you can manually replicate its effects by tightening your privacy settings. We have explained the entire process later in this guide; however, here is the short version:

1. Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Audience and Visibility.
2. Tap each of the following and set them to Friends or Only Me:
   • Profile and Tagging
   • Posts
   • Friends List
   • Stories

Following the steps above is the easiest way to lock down your Facebook profile. However, we advise reading this entire guide to secure your Facebook account as much as possible.

What is Facebook’s Privacy Checkup Tool?

Facebook’s Privacy Checkup Tool is a simple tool designed to help Facebook users tighten their privacy settings.

The tool allows you to locate important settings, such as who can view your shared content, how people can find you on Facebook, your data settings on Facebook, your ad preferences on Facebook, and information on how to keep your account secure.

We strongly recommend using the Facebook privacy checkup tool because it will quickly guide you through each of the most important settings. This will give you peace of mind by allowing you to choose whether to let friends, friends of friends, or nobody find your Facebook account.

How can I limit who sees my posts?

Want to limit who gets to see your future posts? Some people use Facebook as a personal scrapbook or diary, where they can store information about themselves for future reference.

If this is how you prefer to use Facebook and you aren’t interested in displaying everything you do to friends, family, or strangers, it’s a smart move to adjust your Audience and Visibility settings.

Follow these steps to limit who can see your future posts on Facebook:

1. Click on your profile picture in the top right of Facebook.
2. Select Settings and Privacy, followed by Settings.
3. Scroll down to Audience & Visibility in the right-hand menu and select Posts.
4. Click on Who can see your future posts? Select Only Me or whichever audience suits you best.

How do I limit who sees my past posts on Facebook?

Want to stop people from seeing your past posts on Facebook? You can clamp down your timeline to stop strangers or even friends from seeing your Facebook post history.

This is ideal for users who prefer to keep their memories private for posterity, without worrying about the narcissistic social credit system and dopamine feedback loops that Facebook creates.

How to limit who can see past posts:

1. Click your profile picture in the top right and select Settings and Privacy, followed by Settings.
2. Scroll down to Audience & Visibility in the right-hand menu and click Posts.
3. Click on Limit Past Posts.
4. Finally, confirm that you want to limit all past posts. However, be sure to consider the warning carefully before agreeing.

If you limit past posts on your timeline. Only friends will be able to see those posts. Anybody tagged in your past posts (including their friends) may still be able to see your posts. Other than that, they will be hidden.

• Warning: You will not be able to undo this.

If you decide you want to provide access to past posts, you’ll need to change the audience for each individual post. This can be extremely time-consuming, especially if you have hundreds of posts you want to make public again.

How to block friend requests on Facebook

Want to stop people from sending you friend requests on Facebook? We understand that receiving friend requests from people you don’t know can be annoying.  Unfortunately, influencers and other public figures constantly receive a barrage of requests. So what can you do?

While Facebook doesn’t let you block friend requests entirely, you can control who can send you friend requests. By adjusting this setting, you can prevent strangers from finding you on Facebook and reduce unwanted connection attempts.

Follow these steps to block friend requests on Facebook from people outside your circle:

1. Click your profile picture in the top-right corner of Facebook.
2. Select Settings & Privacy, then click Settings.
3. In the left-hand menu, click Audience and Visibility.
4. Select How People Find and Contact You.
5. Click Who can send you friend requests?
6. Choose Friends of friends instead of Everyone.

That’s it! With these settings updated, only people with mutual friends will be able to add you. This makes it much harder for strangers, bots, or spam accounts to fill your notifications with endless unwanted friend requests on Facebook.

Can I limit who can look me up on Facebook using my email or phone number?

Yes. If you are concerned that people might be able to locate you on Facebook by searching for your email or phone number, it is a good idea to limit this information. Many people have their email addresses or phone numbers published publicly due to their work.

Even if you haven’t published your details on a work website or LinkedIn profile, you could still be at risk of being tracked down on Facebook if your information appears on people search sites like Spokeo, TruePeopleSearch, Intelius, and BeenVerified.

The good news is that you can use the steps below to keep your account unsearchable by email or phone number. This will protect you if your contact info has ever been shared publicly or leaked in a data breach (including doxxing attacks).

Use these steps to stop your details from being used to track you down:

1. Click your profile picture in the top right of Facebook.
2. Go to Settings & Privacy, then click Settings.
3. In the left-hand menu, select Audience and Visibility.
4. Click How People Find and Contact You.
5. Locate the settings for Who can Facebook suggest your profile to based on your phone number or email address (People with your email address and People with your phone number)
6. Change both of these settings to No one.

This prevents old acquaintances or strangers who find your information online from tracking you down using your contact details. If you want to completely disappear from search results, it’s an extremely good idea to update both of these to ‘no one’.

Why is my phone number on Facebook, and can I remove it?

Even if you have never added your email address, address, or phone number to your public profile, other users could track you down using these details. This is why many privacy advocates and politicians have been complaining for years about shadow contact matching.

Many Facebook users are surprised to discover that other users can use their private information to locate their profiles. Unfortunately, Facebook treats the email address you use to sign up and the phone number you provided for security purposes (such as receiving 2FA login codes) as public data. This means that by default, your private information can be used to look up your profile. The only solution is to change this privacy setting manually.

Should I remove my personal information from my public Facebook profile?

Yes. It is bad enough that Facebook uses personal information provided for account creation to allow people to search for you. However, things are even riskier if you have ever filled out the public contact forms on your publicly accessible Facebook profile.

If you have ever supplied information about yourself in the About Me section of Facebook, you could be at risk. The problem? Data brokers and people search sites frequently scrape Facebook profiles for phone numbers, email addresses, and other personal information.

By giving platforms like Facebook as little data as possible (we always recommend filling out online profiles with as little info as possible, and even some fake information if you want to throw data brokers off the scent!)

Here is some info you may want to delete from Facebook About Me:

1. Work and Education

• Job title
• Employer
• School or university
• Graduation year

2. Places Lived

• Current city
• Hometown
• Past cities

3. Contact and Basic Info

• Phone numbers
• Email addresses
• Address (some users even enter their street address)
• Website links
• Birthday
• Gender

4. Family and Relationships

• Relationship status
• Family member links

5. Details About You

• Favorite quotes, bio lines, nicknames, etc.

Can I remove my phone number from Facebook?

Yes. However, if you choose to delete your phone number, you will no longer be able to use it for logging in or two-factor authentication. For this reason, we generally recommend hiding your phone number from your public profile rather than completely deleting it.

If you still want to delete your phone number, or you want to switch it for a forwarding number for added privacy, you can do so here:

1. Navigate to Facebook and click your profile photo.
2. Select Settings & Privacy > Settings.
3. In the left-hand menu, click Account Settings > Personal Details.
4. Click Contact Info.
5. If your phone number is listed, click Remove next to it.
6. Confirm that you want to delete your number.

If you decide not to remove your number because you need it for 2FA, we recommend double-checking your “How People Find and Contact You” settings to ensure that lookup via phone number is disabled. (How to disable this setting has already been covered above).

Preventing your phone number from appearing publicly on Facebook is essential if you’re trying to achieve professional privacy, avoid data scraping, or prevent unwanted contact as an influencer.

How to deactivate your Facebook account? (without deleting it)

Need a break from Facebook? The psychological effects of social media are well-documented, and taking a break can do wonders for your mental health. If you’re sick of the endless scrolling, chasing likes, or getting caught in the dopamine feedback loop, you can follow the steps below to deactivate your Facebook account.

This method lets you deactivate without deleting Facebook, so you can return to your account when you’re ready. Once you know this trick, you can switch Facebook on and off whenever you need a break – perfect for focusing on important projects without distractions.

1. Click your profile picture in the top-right of Facebook.
2. Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings.
3. In the left-hand menu, click Accounts Center.
4. Select Personal Details > Account Ownership and Control.
5. Click Deactivation or Deletion.
6. Choose Deactivate Account, then follow the on-screen prompts to confirm your decision.

You can reactivate your account anytime by logging back in. Until then, it will stay hidden from Facebook search and external search engines.

What happens when you deactivate your profile?

If you deactivate your Facebook account, your profile will become invisible to everyone.

• Your name disappears from Facebook search.
• Your timeline, photos, posts, and likes are hidden.
• Friends can’t message you or tag you in new content.
• You’ll be logged out of Messenger (unless you choose to keep it active during deactivation).

However, it is important to note that some things remain active or available:

• Messages you’ve sent in the past will still appear in other people’s inboxes.
• Your name may still appear in your contacts’ friends lists, but it won’t be clickable.

Facebook mobile privacy settings

Planning to update your Facebook privacy settings? We generally recommend changing all your account settings by logging into Facebook via the website in the browser of a laptop or desktop computer.

It’s generally easier to locate and adjust Facebook privacy settings using the desktop version of the site. And once you update on a computer, all the settings will be automatically applied to your mobile app.

But what if you don’t have access to a Windows or Mac computer? Not to worry, you can still log in to Facebook on your mobile browser and request the “Desktop site” view using Chrome or Firefox.

With the desktop version of Facebook activated on mobile, you will see the layout used in this guide. That will make it easier to follow each step to improve your privacy on mobile.

If you prefer using the Facebook app, you can still access your privacy settings by going to:

1. Open the Facebook app and tap your profile picture or three-line menu icon.
2. Scroll down and tap Settings & Privacy, then Privacy Shortcuts or Settings.
3. Tap Privacy Checkup to walk through all major privacy categories.
4. You can also adjust settings directly under:
   • Audience and Visibility
     Profile and Tagging
   • How People Find and Contact You
     

These mobile privacy settings mirror the desktop version and let you control nearly all the privacy options covered in this guide.

How do I block people on Facebook?

Are you receiving unwanted attention or messages in your Facebook account? Sick of someone constantly liking your posts and commenting? Want to prevent strangers from contacting you?

We know how you feel. Unwanted Facebook attention can cause frustration, embarrassment, and stress. If you feel stressed, it is a great idea to consider blocking any annoying users.

Blocking someone on Facebook will prevent them from seeing your profile, messaging you, tagging you in posts, or interacting with you in any way.

Here’s how to block someone on Facebook:

1. Head to the profile of the person you want to block.
2. Click the three-dot menu (•••) under their profile picture.
3. Select Block from the dropdown menu.
4. Confirm that you want to block that user when the confirmation box appears.

Once blocked, that user can no longer view your timeline, comment on posts, send messages or friend requests, or tag you in anything. This can be a huge relief if they’ve been bothering or harassing you. And, if you ever change your mind, just go to:

• Settings & Privacy > Settings > Blocking

You’ll see a list of everyone you’ve blocked, and can unblock anyone with a single click.

How to review past activity and tagged posts

Facebook tags can be annoying, but more importantly, they pose a privacy risk. Whether you want to untag yourself from an embarrassing photo or prevent yourself from appearing in someone else’s profile, it is a great idea to take control of your Facebook profile tagging privacy.

Facebook doesn’t let you completely block people from tagging you in posts. Instead, you can review each tag before it appears on your timeline. And if you don’t accept the post manually, it will not appear on your Timeline (which effectively acts as a complete block of tagged content – because unless you approve a post, it won’t appear on your timeline).

If you want to manage tags set previously, you will need to review and manage past activity:

1. Head to your Activity Log: Click your profile picture (top right) > Settings & Privacy > Settings.  In the left-hand menu, click Activity Log under “Your Activity.”
2. Filter your activity: You can use the filters to review posts, photos, comments, and other interactions that you are tagged in. You can either remove tags from individual posts or hide them from your profile if you don’t mind the tagged content appearing on someone else’s profile.

How to control your tagged posts settings

Click your profile picture, followed by Settings and Privacy. Use the left-hand menu to scroll down to Audience and Visibility, and select Profile and Tagging.

• Who can post on your profile? Set to Only Me if you want full control.
• Who can see what others post on your profile? Set to Friends or Only Me, depending on your preference. You can also set this to custom and choose a small circle of friends to share with if you prefer.
• Review posts you’re tagged in before they appear on your profile? Enable this setting if you prefer to review tags before content appears on your timeline.
• Review tags people add to your posts before they appear on Facebook? Enable this to prevent people from adding new tags to your existing posts.

How to stop Facebook from tracking you across the web

Facebook’s ability to track you around the web is extremely pervasive. Even if you have optimized your Facebook privacy settings (to make your Facebook profile unsearchable), Meta still collects tons of data about what you do both inside and outside the platform.

Studies have revealed that user interaction on Facebook (including the accounts you follow and the posts you like) can reveal a huge amount of information about you.

Seemingly disparate data sets about the foods you eat, the films you love, and the music you listen to can allow algorithms to deduce your political affiliation, religious views, and even sexual preferences. This is why Facebook’s profiling data is so valuable—and yet, from a privacy standpoint, so dangerous.

How Facebook tracks you everywhere

Facebook uses an intricate web of cookies, trackers, and its oft-criticized Meta Pixel technology to monitor user activities right across the web.

This kind of Facebook activity tracking allows Meta to see what you’re doing on other websites and apps. This helps it to build detailed shadow profiles, which are then exploited to manipulate the content you see (often referred to as the  “social media bubble” effect, or filter bubble) and to power targeted ads.

You need to deal with these settings if you want to stop Facebook from spying on you. Fortunately, there are things you can do to prevent yourself from being tracked 24/7 by Facebook.

How to prevent Facebook activity tracking

1. Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Your Activity.
2. Select Apps and Websites from the list.
3. Check the list of apps and websites you’ve used to log in to Facebook.
4. Revoke any permissions you don’t trust, and disconnect any apps and services you no longer use. If any of the connections show as “expired,” it is also a good idea to remove them.

Can’t find the “Apps and Websites” section?

Facebook’s settings menu sometimes varies across regions. If you don’t see it under “Your Activity,” go to Accounts Center > Your information and permissions instead. Here, look for Apps and Websites to manage external apps.

How to limit ad tracking and turn off Facebook tracking off-site

To reduce Facebook tracking off-site, follow these steps:

1. Click your profile picture in the top-right corner and select Settings & Privacy, then click Settings.
2. In the left-hand menu, locate Accounts Center and click it.
3. Under Your information and permissions, select Your activity off Meta technologies.
4. In this menu, you can choose to Disconnect specific activity, Manage Future Activity, or Clear previous activity.
5. Toggle off Future Off-Facebook Activity to stop new data from being linked to your account. You can use the other settings to manage older data connected

Changing these settings will reduce how much off-Facebook activity occurs, which helps protect your data privacy. You can also navigate to Ad Preferences to update your Facebook ad personalization settings. This will help to limit targeted advertising caused by Facebook and the websites it works with.

Can a VPN stop Facebook tracking?

A VPN hides your real IP address from websites you visit, including Facebook. This prevents platforms like Facebook from detecting your actual location.

That said, a VPN alone won’t make your Facebook account private. If you’re logged in, Facebook still knows who you are and tracks everything you do. This allows it to tie your Facebook activities to your name, even if you are using a VPN.

The biggest advantage of using a VPN with Facebook is to stop Facebook tracking on external networks, bypass restrictions, and protect your data from surveillance. For example, VPN encryption allows you to use Facebook privately at work, in school, or on any other network that has blocked Facebook.

A VPN also helps you access Facebook in countries where it’s banned or heavily censored (like China or Iran). Just remember that VPNs offer privacy, not anonymity. If you’re engaging in activism, dissent, or whistleblowing, we recommend using a burner Facebook account (that isn’t tied to your real name, device, or phone number) as well as a VPN.

Frequently asked questions

Related: A guide to Twitter privacy settings