The question of what to hide on your Facebook profile is basically a long discussion to go along, more because the topic which includes personal preferences and experiences is subjective for approach. To this date, Facebook offers a real wide variety of things to talk, post, act, link, or even share about, and the list includes from basic check-ins to geo-tagging, videos, music files, pictures, and even stamps. What to hide on your profile, then, is up to what or which you really want to keep private or restricted about.
The first thing that should hit your attention in terms to making your profile in one way private is choosing the right section/s. The sections talk about or shows your personal details such as your education, home address, current address, current relationship status, current job title and company, and even small stuffs like the number of people following you and/or your favourite movies. In short, there are three things to be really taken into question:
- Personal details (About, photos, friends, places, fitness, notes)
- Interests (music, movies, TV shows, books, games, likes
- Social items (groups, likes, events, websites or links)
The best thing to really protect your profile items from prying eyes is to simply remove (unlike, delete) them from your list. However, the huge chances are you might not want seeing them off your profile or you just want those details made private to only be viewable by a few friends or by yourself.
However, be carefully noted also that things that you have hidden on your timeline may still appear on search and other places on Facebook.
To check whether you have already hidden a selected few items or sections from the public:
- Click on the gear icon on the top right of the screen, and select Privacy settings.
- Click on Timeline and Tagging found on the left sidebar of the page.
- On the section Who can see things on my timeline?, click on View As parallel to Review what other people see on your timeline. This will deliver you back to your profile.
- On top of the profile, a black information bar should appear, letting you know whether you’re looking at your profile as a public, anonymous user or not. You may also click on View as Specific Person to view your profile according to a friend’s access. The latter would be very helpful to determine which items are still viewable if you have set them available to only a selected few.
For a few tips or guidelines as to which item is best for public or not:
- Better not use any other name outside of your original name as it will make your presence harder to search for especially by the important people in your life. If you want to make your profile more anonymous, better keep your information and even your photos monitored or private.
- Unless required by Facebook, you can keep your address or other details blank so as not to appear even on your own end. However, you can control this by restricting this only to your friends or only to you. The same settings work simultaneously to other items on your timeline such as your interests and social items.
- Sensitive items like rated movies that you have watched may also be individually hidden from your timeline without totally removing them from your list.
- If you do not want other people to see your connections or friends, you can also edit that area of privacy (almost each section or item in Facebook now offers privacy options). However, it would be good to leave your friends list public so as to help others better identify you through the list of character references who they may know.
- Hiding your professional and educational background would be good if you want to make your profile purely a personal one without any references to your professional aspect.
- It is always best to keep those sensitive posts of yours as hidden on your timeline. Don’t worry, you can still view them from your activity log.
- Links, such as links to your blog contents or to a website, may be good for marketing purposes.
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