Facebook Privacy Settings: How to Find and Change Them

Privacy settings on Facebook are scattered across menus that Meta has reorganized more than once, so knowing where to look matters as much as knowing what each toggle does. This walkthrough covers the sections most people actually need to check: who can see your posts and profile, who can tag you, what happens with off-Facebook activity, and where the ad controls live. Work through the checklist below in order.

Where do I find privacy settings on Facebook?

Meta consolidated a number of its privacy tools into a hub called Privacy Center. In its announcement of the tool, Meta says the current version has five modules, each containing guides and controls related to a common privacy topic: Security, Sharing, Collection, Use, and Ads. On desktop, Meta says you reach Privacy Center through Settings & Privacy; all five modules sit inside it.

Individual controls still have their own dedicated pages too. Audience defaults, profile visibility, and tagging each get separate settings screens that Privacy Center links out to, rather than replacing them outright.

What settings should I change first?

Start with the setting that affects every future post, not just one. Facebook lets you choose a default audience that applies automatically going forward, separate from changing any single post's audience. Meta's Help Center page on default audiences puts it plainly: "On Facebook, you control who can see what you post by selecting its audience. Setting a default audience selects the audience for your future posts." If you've never touched this control, it may be set wider than you'd choose today.

Reach it from Privacy Center's Sharing module, which links out to the audience and privacy settings screen; go that way rather than hunting for a fixed menu label, which Meta has moved before. Changing the default doesn't retroactively change old posts — it only governs what you share from now on. Each new post still shows an audience selector you can use to narrow that post beyond the default.

How do I control who sees my posts, photos, and stories?

Every individual post carries its own audience selector, separate from the default you just set. Meta's guide to Timeline and profile visibility explains that when you post something, "you can control who sees it by using the audience selector." That selector lets you pick a narrower audience — friends, a custom list, or just yourself — for that single item, overriding the default temporarily.

To check how your profile actually looks to someone outside your friends list, use Meta's built-in preview tool. The same Help Center page tells users to "use the View As tool" to see what their Timeline looks like to other people. Run it after making changes, because it's the only way to confirm a setting worked as intended rather than assuming it did.

Who can see your profile, find you, and tag you?

Some profile information is public no matter what you set elsewhere. Meta's Help Center states that "anyone can see your public information, which includes your name, profile picture, cover photo, gender, username, user ID (account number), and networks." There's no setting that hides these fields from everyone — they're treated as baseline identifying information.

Tagging is a separate lever. Meta offers a review step before tagged content lands on your profile: "Before photos, posts and app activities that you're tagged in appear on your Timeline, you can approve or dismiss them by turning on Timeline review," according to the same Help Center page. But approving or dismissing a tag doesn't erase the underlying post. Meta is direct about the limit here: "you can still be tagged, and the tagged content (ex: photo, post) is shared with the audience the person who posted it selected other places on Facebook (ex: News Feed and search)." Turning on Timeline Review controls what shows up on your own profile. It does not control who else sees the original post.

What is off-Facebook activity, and how do I clear it?

Off-Facebook activity is data that other apps and websites send to Facebook about your visits and actions there, which Meta then links to your account. The Electronic Frontier Foundation walked through the control for managing this in its guide to off-Facebook activity settings. Beyond clearing your existing history, there's a setting to stop new data from being connected going forward: "At the bottom of that sidebar, click 'More Options' and then select 'Manage Future Activity.'" Turning that off is a simple confirmation — "Click 'Turn Off' in the pop-up, and you are done!" — which, per EFF, "should return you to the same screen, with the toggle now grey and to the left in the 'off' position."

The same EFF guide cautions: "Note that this won't stop third parties from sending Facebook information about you—it will only stop Facebook from associating that information with your account." The data collection by outside apps and sites continues; you're only cutting the link between that data and your named account. For more on how advertisers track you across apps in the first place, see our explainer on what Facebook's advertising ID does.

How do I stop Facebook from tracking me for ads?

Start with the "Manage Future Activity" toggle described above in EFF's guide. Then open the Ads module, one of the five categories Meta lists in its Privacy Center announcement, and work through the ad controls there. Check them on screen rather than against a fixed list of toggle names: Meta has reorganized this section before, and the labels move.

Checklist: a full privacy tune-up in one sitting

On desktop, open Settings & Privacy and go to Privacy Center to see all five control categories — Security, Sharing, Collection, Use, and Ads.
Set your default post audience so future posts don't default to a wider group than you want.
Run the View As tool to see your Timeline the way an outside viewer sees it.
Turn on Timeline Review so tagged content needs your approval before appearing on your profile — and remember this doesn't hide the original tagged post elsewhere.
Open the off-Facebook activity controls, review your history, then use "More Options" → "Manage Future Activity" to stop new outside data from linking to your account.
Open the Ads module in Privacy Center and work through the ad controls there.