As you can imagine, we get a lot of mail on TechJunkie Towers. Most come from readers asking us to answer questions or solve problems. We get too many to answer them all, but some of the more interesting questions turn into tutorials like this one. As in the other day when asked if it is possible to see who viewed or visited your Facebook profile.
We get a lot of these types of questions, so I thought I’d answer this directly, and then I covered the basic Facebook privacy settings so you know exactly what you’re putting out and who can see it.
Can you see who viewed or visited your Facebook profile?
There are many tips and tricks that offer multiple ways to see if someone is cyberstalking you. Unfortunately, none of them really work. Currently there is no way to see who visited your profile or spent time checking you out. You will come across many sites that say they can help you find this information, but none of the advertised paths currently show anything as they promise.
I think this is a bug on Facebook side. Considering how little power we have when we hand over our data, it would be nice to at least know who is using it or controlling us, especially with the prevalence of cases where Facebook is literally used to track people. Even if it’s just for curiosity, letting people see who visits their profile can be a nice feature that can really help put an end to cyberbullying. However, it is not a feature at the moment and you cannot see who viewed or visited your Facebook profile. At least not yet.
Managing Facebook privacy settings
I don’t like Facebook too much. If I didn’t have to use it for my job and keep in touch with old friends, I wouldn’t use it at all. It treats your data and privacy as property, and shares and sells your information to anyone it can without notifying you. Once it’s done you have no control over anything and you can’t force social networks to delete anything. Still.
Privacy basics
At the most basic level, Facebook privacy is divided into several levels. Public, Friends, Excluding Friends, Specific Friends, and Just Me. Logically, they refer to who can or can’t see your activity when you’re online, and they’re pretty self-explanatory. Public means anyone can see your profile, Friends limits your profile to people in your friends list, Except Friends lets you exclude certain friends, Specific Friends works like a preference list, and Only Me means your profile is completely private.
Go to Settings & Privacy on Facebook. Go through all the settings to control the various levels. Check out future posts, all posts you’ve been tagged in, and who can contact you. Modify each as you see fit.
If you want to increase privacy, ‘Who can call me?’ change option. to a higher level. By default, it is set to Everyone. Change it if you want.
Post privacy
Posts have similar privacy settings to your profile. You can set them to Public, Friends, Excluded Friends, Specific Friends, and Me Only. General is really just for businesses or those looking to build a follower base. The average user should use the Friends or No Friends settings for posts if they want to maintain any privacy. If you are a member of groups, they are also an option when setting privacy.
Application privacy
If you are using Facebook apps, you have to sign your privacy piecemeal. Apps often want to be able to post on your timeline, use your Friends list, and take various suspicious actions they may need in the future. Some apps cannot run without these permissions, while others don’t actually need them, but are most likely set to use them by default.
Go to Settings and Apps and check installed apps and their permissions. You might be surprised at how many and what kind of permissions are allowed. Work on them sensibly and remove any you no longer use or need, and check the permissions of the ones you still use.
Facebook Live
Facebook Live also needs to be adjusted to increase privacy. When you first launch the app, you will be asked to grant Facebook access to your camera and microphone, which you need to do. After you’ve setup, visit Settings and edit audience options. Like posts, leave this as Public if you’re a business or want to build an audience. Otherwise, it might be a good idea to limit viewers to Friends.
Security and privacy
It might be a good idea to upgrade your security while checking your privacy settings on Facebook. Go to Security & Login in Settings and enable two factor authentication and set Facebook to send alerts for unrecognized logins. This means it will take an extra second or two to log into the site, but after that it will seriously upgrade your security.
Do you have any other Facebook privacy tips or concerns? You know what to do.
