Facebook is a very interesting place because of how easy it has made for people who have long lost touch to connect with just a search. At the same time, it has made it very possible for strangers to know everything there is about one including where you were last night and who is related to you. It is because of things like this that knowing how to hide your profile on Facebook from search engines, at least, can be very important.
If you have never searched for your name on the Internet, you will be surprised the day you try because you will find out that your Facebook profile shows there. This simply means that once someone clicks on it, the person will end up on your Facebook timeline going through your stuff.
The good news is that there are different options for hiding your profile if you want to make it difficult for someone who searches the internet to find you. Beyond that, there are also many ways that you can improve on your privacy even when it comes to people on Facebook, your Friends, and everyone else.
How To Hide Your Profile On Facebook
1. Hide profile from public searches on other search engines
Normally, if you search Google or any other search engine without even coming to Facebook, you will appear. If you want to stop such search engines from linking to your Facebook, here are the steps to follow:
- Sign in to your Facebook account
- At the right side of the menu after the question mark icon, you will see a little arrow. Click on it.
- On the drop-down, select Settings
- At the left side, select Privacy
- Under How People Find and Contact You, Click on Edit beside Do you want search engines outside Facebook to link to your profile?
- Untick the box for Allow search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile
- Click on Turn off
2. How to prevent some people from seeing your posts
You can also prevent some people from seeing the posts you share on Facebook probably because you don’t want them thinking it is about them or because it is actually about them, or even maybe because those people are your employees or just people you don’t want to see your posts. Here are the steps:
- In your Facebook account, go to settings
- Under Privacy Settings and Tools, You will see Your Activity
- The first option is Who can see your future posts? Click on Edit.
- Click on Public and select either Friends to limit your posts to only your friends or Friends except to hide your posts from some people.
- If you select the second option, a list of your friends will be provided. Simply select those you don’t want to see your posts and then click on Save Changes.
3. Blocking Options
Another important tip you probably don’t know is that you have the options to block annoying pages on Facebook, apps that keep contacting you, invitations to events, certain app invites, and even messages and video calls from some people. This means that they won’t also be able to contact you even when they use the Messenger app. Nonetheless, they can post on your timeline or even tag you unless you block their profile. You can also block a user completely or have a restricted list. Here are the simple steps to follow:
- Go to the Settings in your account.
- On the far right side of your Facebook page, select Blocking
- This will open the Manage Blocking option for you.
- Select what you want to do and make the changes and then simply save.
4. Turn off tagging
If you are tired of getting tagged in things that do not concern by people you don’t even know, Facebook has also made it possible for you to make it impossible for people to tag you or if you want, even share on your timeline.
Using this, you can decide who can post on your timeline, who can see what others post, and even hiding some comments in your timeline that have certain words. You can also decide to review the posts you have been tagged in before they get shared. Here are the steps to take:
- After logging into your account, again go to Settings.
- On the left side of your page, click on Timeline and Tagging Settings
- Select Timeline to control what is posted on your timeline, Tagging to control who sees what you are tagged in, or Review to review posts you have been tagged in.
- After making your changes, simply save it.
5. Who can Send you a friend request and see your friend list?
Another important thing that you can do on Facebook is to control who sends a friend request to you and who can get to see your friend list. Here are the steps to follow:
- Like all others, after logging into your account, go to settings
- Select privacy at the left side of your page.
- In the box for How People Find and Contact You, you can change settings for Who can send you friend requests? You can also set for who can see your friend list among other things.
Note
Before now, Facebook had a setting option that made it possible for people to prevent others from finding them on Facebook when they search for them, but the option has been disabled in 2013 so it is now not possible to stop people from searching and finding you on Facebook, but you can stop them from finding you on other search engines including Google, Yahoo, Yandex, and all others following the steps above.
See Also: How Much Do You Know About Facebook? Fun Stuffs you Never Knew
Another good option that you have is to prevent people who are not your friends from seeing your timeline using the 4th method above so that even when people find you, they will not have access to your timeline. This is all because privacy has become a thing of great concern for both individuals and businesses.
While with these methods you will get greater privacy on your Facebook, getting absolute privacy may require you to deactivate your Facebook account which is not something anyone would want to do, hence the thing is to take advantage of all the privacy options that you have as best as you can.
