How to become (almost) invisible on Facebook

Randomers making friend requests? Adverts irritating you? These tips might help.

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FACEBOOK DOESN’T EXACTLY make it easy for you to stay off its radar.

Some people don’t like getting random friend requests or awkward messages from long-forgotten friends. Some people just want to use Facebook to keep up with others, but don’t want others to be able to keep up with them.

Want to stay hidden on Facebook?

We can help you out.

When you’re finished, no one but you will be able to see your Facebook activity, view your photos, or see where you’ve checked in. Your current friends will still be able to view your basic profile — there’s no way around this — but all your activity will be blank.

Note: You don’t have to block all the features we suggest. You can pick and choose. If you still want to keep things like wall posts and event invites, you can.

How to become (almost) invisible on Facebook

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To get started, click on the cog in upper right hand corner and select 'Privacy Settings'
To change privacy settings, click 'edit' to right of each setting. When finished, click 'close' to exit each individual section.
For the most stringent settings, select 'Only me' from dropdown menu.
You can make it so random strangers can't send you friend requests by changing this setting to 'friends of friends'.
To further shrink communciation from outside world, select 'strict filtering' to keep randoms from messaging you.
To eliminate people from looking you up using email or phone number you used to sign up to Facebook, select 'friends' from 'Who can look me up?' setting.
Uncheck the 'Let other search engines link to your timeline' so the very fact that you are on Facebook can't be Googled or Yahoo-ed or whatever.
Now move onto 'Timeline and Tagging' (below privacy settings).
You'll use the same technique here - always choose 'only me' option when available.
Once done, your 'timeline and tagging' page should look like this.
Disable the app platform to prevent apps from gaining access - but note that you won't be able to log in to third-party apps using Facebook anymore.
If you do turn off app platform, the Apps menu shrinks. Next: adverts.
Changing 'Third Party Site' to 'No-one' ensures your picture or name will be left out if any third-party tries to use them in adverts....
...Switching 'Adverts and Friends' to 'No-one' stops Facebook from making suggestions to your friends, based on what you have 'liked'.

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- Steven Tweedie

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News in 60 seconds

How to become (almost) invisible on Facebook

To get started, click on the cog in upper right hand corner and select 'Privacy Settings'

To change privacy settings, click 'edit' to right of each setting. When finished, click 'close' to exit each individual section.

For the most stringent settings, select 'Only me' from dropdown menu.

You can make it so random strangers can't send you friend requests by changing this setting to 'friends of friends'.

To further shrink communciation from outside world, select 'strict filtering' to keep randoms from messaging you.

To eliminate people from looking you up using email or phone number you used to sign up to Facebook, select 'friends' from 'Who can look me up?' setting.

Uncheck the 'Let other search engines link to your timeline' so the very fact that you are on Facebook can't be Googled or Yahoo-ed or whatever.

Now move onto 'Timeline and Tagging' (below privacy settings).

You'll use the same technique here - always choose 'only me' option when available.

Once done, your 'timeline and tagging' page should look like this.

Disable the app platform to prevent apps from gaining access - but note that you won't be able to log in to third-party apps using Facebook anymore.

If you do turn off app platform, the Apps menu shrinks. Next: adverts.

Changing 'Third Party Site' to 'No-one' ensures your picture or name will be left out if any third-party tries to use them in adverts....

These people were arrested because of something they wrote on Facebook>Graphs show what social media sites Irish people are using>9 embarrassing things we all do on Facebook, but can never admit>How to spot an Irish mammy on social media>

These people were arrested because of something they wrote on Facebook>
Graphs show what social media sites Irish people are using>
9 embarrassing things we all do on Facebook, but can never admit>
How to spot an Irish mammy on social media>