Facebook has made it increasingly difficult to find all the privacy settings buried across its platform. This guide covers every setting you need to change to lock down your profile.
Who Can See Your Posts
Go to Settings & Privacy → Settings → Privacy. Under "Your activity," set "Who can see your future posts" to Friends. Also click "Limit Past Posts" to change all your old public posts to Friends-only at once.
Who Can Find You
Still in Privacy settings, look for "How people find and contact you." Change all three options — "Who can send you friend requests," "Who can see your friends list," and "Who can look you up using your email/phone" — to Friends or Only Me.
Also set "Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?" to No. This prevents Google from indexing your Facebook profile.
Turn Off Location History
Go to Settings → Location → Location History and turn it off. Also tap "View Your Location History" to see what's already been collected, and clear it.
Remove Third-Party App Access
Go to Settings → Apps and Websites. You'll likely find dozens of apps you've forgotten about that still have access to your Facebook data. Remove any you don't actively use.
Turn Off Face Recognition
Go to Settings → Face Recognition and set it to No. Facebook uses this to identify you in photos uploaded by other people.
Limit Ad Targeting
Go to Settings → Ads → Ad Preferences. Under "Ad settings," turn off "Ads based on data from partners" and "Ads based on your activity on Facebook." This won't eliminate ads but reduces how targeted they are.
Off-Facebook Activity
This is the most important one most people miss. Go to Settings → Your Facebook Information → Off-Facebook Activity. Here you can see — and clear — the data Facebook has collected about your activity on other websites and apps. Click "Clear History" and then "Manage Future Activity" to disconnect future off-Facebook tracking.
Download Your Data
Before locking everything down, go to Settings → Your Facebook Information → Download Your Information to get a copy of everything Facebook has collected on you. It's often illuminating.
The Reality
These settings reduce Facebook's data collection but don't eliminate it. Facebook still tracks you across the web via the Facebook pixel embedded on millions of websites, your phone's location data if you've granted location permissions, and the contact information friends upload to their accounts. For deeper privacy, use a separate browser profile (or Firefox with uBlock Origin) whenever you visit sites that aren't Facebook.