You must adjust these 7 privacy settings immediately

Facebook’s list of privacy settings is now starting to look like a maze. If you’re looking for a specific setting, you’ll always get lost in a list of other settings that you don’t need at the time. We looked for you the route to the 7 privacy settings of Facebook that you should definitely adjust, and explain why it is ‘important’ to adjust them.

Facebook privacy settings

In recent years, more and more emphasis has been placed around Facebook on privacy. On the one hand for privacy of your Facebook data behind the scenes and on the other hand for profile data that all users can view on your profile. Users can therefore control their privacy on the social medium with more and more settings. The disadvantage of such settings is that you have to enable them yourself. As a result, there is a good chance that much of your data – such as your friends list – is visible to everyone.

In this article we focus on the data that others can view. This concerns data on your timeline or general profile information, which you may not want other users of the platform to be able to find. We explain the steps below for the Android app. The same settings can be found in the iOS app and the Facebook website. However, settings are sometimes displayed slightly differently or can be found in a different place. So keep that in mind when following the step-by-step plans.

1. Hide your friends list

By default, your friends list is displayed publicly and anyone can browse the list of friends, family, or colleagues. So it is possible for friends of friends, or for people you don’t know at all, to see who you know and with whom you have a relationship, for example. Don’t you feel comfortable that others just have access to this list? Then Facebook has a setting for that that makes the list only accessible to friends, to specific friends or even to you alone.

1. Open the Facebook app
2. Click on the top right hamburger menu
3. Click at the bottom Settings and privacy
4. Then choose the tab Settings
5. Scroll down until you Privacy encounters
6. Then click Privacy settings
7. Look for the option Who can see your friends list?
8. Click on the setting and select the desired option

2. Check Tagged Timeline Posts

You may have seen them, the Ray-Ban sunglasses scams. Through a hacked Facebook account, attackers were able to tag a large group of people to spread the Ray-Ban messages around the world. That this is and was possible is a result of not checking messages – both text and photos – in which people are tagged. Normally there is little to worry about when friends tag each other, but it can have serious consequences. In addition, you may also want to be able to determine whether a post is on your timeline. This can be done with the steps below.

1. Open the Facebook app
2. Click on the top right hamburger menu
3. Click at the bottom Settings and privacy
4. Then choose the tab Settings
5. Scroll down until you Privacy encounters
6. Click below Privacy on Profile and tagging
7. Select the option at the bottom Want to check messages you’ve been tagged in before the message appears on your profile?
8. Put the switch on next to Check posts you’ve been tagged in

3. Remove yourself from search engines

Facebook allows profile pages to be indexed by search engines such as Google by default. That way, anyone can find your profile by searching for your name in a search engine. Would you rather not have your profile found on Google – or any other search engine? Then you can disable the indexing of your Facebook profile via your Facebook settings. Mind you, this doesn’t happen on day one and depends on how fast search engines remove your profile. So if it is still possible to find your profile after two days, then you now know why.

1. Open the Facebook app
2. Click on the top right hamburger menu
3. Click at the bottom Settings and privacy
4. Then choose the tab Settings
5. Scroll down until you Privacy encounters
6. Then click Privacy settings
7. Scroll down until you Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to redirect to your profile? comes across, then click on it
8. Finally put the switch out behind Allow search engines outside of Facebook to redirect to your profile

4. Limit search options on Facebook

How do you want others to find your profile on Facebook? In any case, it will no longer be possible via search engines, but it will still be possible to look up your profile on Facebook based on your telephone number or e-mail address. Unless you disable this in the platform’s privacy settings, of course. If you disable these options, you can only be found with your name. If that’s exactly what you want, then it’s time to get started.

1. Open the Facebook app
2. Click on the top right hamburger menu
3. Click at the bottom Settings and privacy
4. Then choose the tab Settings
5. Scroll down until you Privacy encounters
6. Then click Privacy settings
7. Scroll down until you Who can you find using the email address or phone number you provided? come across, click on it
8. Choose both settings the desired option, with a choice of: Everybody, Friends of friends, friends or Only me

5. Check connected services

Have you ever completed a ‘see if I’m a mermaid’ questionnaire that is going around on Facebook? There is a good chance that a service is connected to your Facebook profile that can view data from your account. Such apps can no longer ’empty your entire Facebook account’, as was possible in the time of Cambridge Analytica, but it remains possible for parties to view data. This is of course no problem for services that you actively use and trust. If a service you no longer use is still connected, it is better to remove it. Read below how you can do that.

1. Open the Facebook app
2. Click on the top right hamburger menu
3. Click at the bottom Settings and privacy
4. Then choose the tab Settings
5. Scroll down until you Security encounters
6. Then click on the tab Apps and websites
7. Choose the option at the top Signed up via Facebook
8. In the event that websites or apps are connected, you can disable it here

6. Hide past messages

Would you rather not have old messages on Facebook accessible to everyone, for example because you are less proud of the texts or photos you posted in the past? Facebook offers a setting for that. Messages, however, remain visible to friends when the feature is turned on. The tool can only be used to make messages invisible to strangers (public) or friends of friends. The advantage is that in this way you do not have to manually delete or at least make old messages invisible.

1. Open the Facebook app
2. Click on the top right hamburger menu
3. Click at the bottom Settings and privacy
4. Then choose the tab Settings
5. Scroll down until you Privacy encounters
6. Then click Privacy settings
7. Search for the option Restrict who can see past posts, click on it
8. Then click Restrict previous posts to perform the action

7. Disable Face Recognition for Photos

Facebook has gotten a lot smarter in recent years. For example, the service can now recognize faces in photos and make suggestions for tagging specific people when you post photos. In addition, Facebook can send you a notification if your face has been found on another profile, but without the other person tagging you in it. It could just be that someone else uses your photo to mislead others.

However, the extent to which Facebook uses facial recognition does raise a number of privacy issues. For example, you can wonder whether you actually want Facebook to know so well what your face looks like. Facial features are, after all, biometric data that you carry with you throughout your life, without you getting the chance to adjust it. With a view to the future in which more and more biometric data is used, it may feel nice to adjust the setting immediately. You can find out how with the step-by-step plan below.

1. Open the Facebook app
2. Click on the top right hamburger menu
3. Click at the bottom Settings and privacy
4. Then choose the tab Settings
5. Scroll down until you Privacy encounters
6. Then click Face recognition
7. Select the option Do you want Facebook to recognize you in photos and videos?
8. click on new to disable facial recognition

Which privacy settings for your Facebook profile have we not yet covered that we still need to cover in this article? Please also let us know whether you are going to get started with these settings, or whether you actually think the basic settings are fine.