Facebook Privacy Settings Guide

Finding Your Privacy Controls Within Facebook

Facebook stores its privacy settings in several locations throughout the platform, and knowing where to find them is the first step toward managing your personal information. The main privacy hub is accessed through the settings menu, which you can reach by clicking the downward arrow in the top-right corner of your Facebook homepage. From there, select "Settings and privacy," then click "Settings." This takes you to the main settings page where privacy controls live alongside other account options.

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Once in the Settings section, you'll see a left-hand menu with various categories. The "Privacy" option within this menu is where most visibility controls are located. Here you can adjust who sees your posts, who can contact you, and who can look up your profile using phone numbers or email addresses. Additionally, Facebook maintains a separate section called "Apps and websites" under the Settings menu, which controls third-party application permissions—a critical area that many users overlook.

Another important location for privacy management is the "Privacy Checkup" tool, which Facebook periodically prompts users to review. This tool walks through key privacy decisions in a simplified format and can be accessed directly through Facebook's main menu. It's designed to help users review choices about profile visibility, app permissions, and who can contact them without needing to navigate multiple pages of settings.

For those concerned about specific posts or past activity, the "Your Facebook Information" section (also under Settings) provides access to your data download and deletion options. This area shows what information Facebook has collected about you and allows you to review archived content. Understanding this organization of settings prevents confusion when you need to make changes and ensures you don't miss important privacy controls scattered throughout the platform.

Practical takeaway: Bookmark or save the direct link to your Settings page. Familiarize yourself with the left-hand menu in Settings so you know where to find privacy controls, apps permissions, and security options when you need them.

Controlling Who Sees Your Profile Information and Posts

Facebook offers granular controls over the visibility of nearly every piece of information on your profile. These settings determine whether your posts, photos, personal details, and activity are visible to friends only, the general public, or specific groups of people you choose. The most important setting is your "Who can see your posts?" option, located in the Privacy section of Settings. This single setting controls the default audience for all future posts you create, though you can override it on a per-post basis by selecting a different audience at the moment you publish.

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When you set your post visibility to "Friends," only people you've added as friends can see your new posts, photos, and status updates. Choosing "Public" means anyone on Facebook—or anyone searching the internet—can potentially find and view your content. A third option, "Friends except," allows you to post to friends while excluding specific people. Some users also create custom lists to share posts with only a subset of friends, such as family members or close colleagues, which requires additional setup but provides more control over different audiences in your life.

Beyond post visibility, individual profile details have separate settings. Your phone number, email address, birthdate, relationship status, and education information can each be set to different visibility levels. You can make your phone number visible to friends only, while keeping your email public, for example. The "Who can look you up?" section controls whether people can find your profile by searching your phone number or email, which is particularly important if you want to limit unsolicited contact from people you don't know.

Photo and tag settings also deserve attention. You can control who can post photos of you, who can tag you in posts or photos, and whether tagged content appears on your timeline automatically or requires your review first. The "Review posts you're tagged in before they appear on your timeline" option is valuable if you're concerned about unvetted content being associated with your profile. Similarly, you can limit who sees photos you're tagged in and who can comment on your photos.

Past posts present a separate concern. If you've been on Facebook for years, your older posts may have been shared with a broader audience than you'd prefer today. Facebook provides a tool called "Limit past posts" which changes the visibility of all previously published posts to friends only, though this is a one-time action and doesn't allow for selective editing of individual old posts.

Practical takeaway: Review your default post audience setting and ensure it matches your comfort level. Then audit your "Who can look you up?" settings and your photo/tag settings. Consider using the "Limit past posts" feature if your account predates stricter privacy practices.

Understanding How Third-Party Apps Access Your Information

When you use a mobile game, a productivity tool, or a survey website that offers Facebook login as an option, you're granting that application permission to access certain information from your Facebook account. This process is convenient—you don't need to create a separate password—but it comes with privacy implications. Facebook requires apps to request permission for specific types of data, such as your name, email, friend list, or information from your public profile. However, the permissions granted when you first sign in with Facebook may be broader than you realize, and Facebook may have changed how apps access information over the years.

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Every third-party app connected to your Facebook account has the potential to collect data beyond what you explicitly notice. When you play a game and grant it access to your friend list, that game company can see who your friends are. If you use a personality quiz and it requests access to your photos, that platform receives data about your image library. Some apps request permission to post on your behalf, which could theoretically be used to share content without your direct action in that moment. The app receives this data either immediately when you grant permission or continuously throughout your use of the app, depending on what it was designed to do.

To review which apps currently have access to your information, navigate to Settings, then select "Apps and websites." Here you'll see three tabs: "Active apps and websites," "Expired apps," and "Removed apps." The Active section shows every application you've connected to Facebook and is still in use. Clicking on any app reveals exactly what permissions you granted—usually presented as a list of data types like "email address," "friends list," "birthday," or "photos." This is the most important section to review regularly.

For each active app, you have options to remove access entirely or to modify the permissions you originally granted. Removing an app disconnects it from your Facebook account immediately, though any data it previously collected remains with that company. Modifying permissions is a middle-ground approach: you might remove an app's ability to see your friend list while still allowing it to access your basic profile information. This requires clicking on the app and adjusting individual toggles for each permission type.

Expired apps are those you connected to in the past but no longer use. These should be reviewed and removed, as they may have data about you stored on their servers. The Removed apps section shows applications you've intentionally disconnected, which no longer have access to new information but may still retain previously collected data.

One often-overlooked permission is the ability for apps to post on your behalf. Review whether you've granted this to games or tools that shouldn't be publishing content. Additionally, examine which apps can see your friends list, as this data is valuable for marketing purposes and can enable other companies to target your social network with advertisements or requests.

Practical takeaway: Spend time in your Apps and Websites settings reviewing active connections. Remove any apps you no longer use, and consider revoking permissions for data types those apps don't actually need (such as friend lists for a simple task management tool). Repeat this review quarterly or annually.

Monitoring Login Activity and Recognizing Unauthorized Access

Facebook's "Where you're logged in" section shows all active sessions on your account—meaning every device from which you're currently accessing Facebook. This tool is found in Settings under "Security and login." Here you see a list of devices with details including the browser type, operating system, approximate location based on IP address, and the date and time of the most recent activity. For example, you might see "Chrome on Windows from New York, NY" or "Safari on iPhone from San Francisco, CA." If you see a device or location you don't recognize, this is a sign that someone else may have accessed your account.

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Each device or session in this list has a three-dot menu that allows you to log out from that specific device without logging out from others. This is valuable if you used Facebook on a borrowed computer or a public device and want to end that session remotely. You don't need to change your password to remove a single device—you can simply log it out from this menu. However, if you see