How to Stop People from Finding You on Facebook

Facebook is one of the most commonly used social networking websites where thousands of millions of people interact with one another. You can have Friends, friends of friends and more, sometimes people who don’t know each other find a way of contacting each other through the search tab for Facebook.

While finding friends on Facebook has been made easier by this search tab, however, there are many Facebook users who don’t like getting friend requests from anyone and everyone and would prefer their profiles never being found by strangers or even friends of friends.

As a result of the numerous requests, you often get fed up and wonder if you could stop people looking for you using your name, email address or number. Well yes, you can. Facebook allows its users to keep their profile hidden if anyone searches for their name on the Facebook search bar. This is a setting which can be accessed from your Facebook account. You can control the people who can look for you on Facebook through this amazing feature. Follow the steps as mentioned to change the current settings of your profile.

1. Sign in to your Facebook account.

   

2. Do you see the downward facing arrow in the top right corner of the page? Click on that.

   

   Here, you will find the tab for settings. That is what you need to click on from the dropdown list of options.

3. When you click settings from the dropdown list, you will find all the possible settings for your Facebook account, including your privacy settings. This is what we need to access to hide your profile from being search in the search bar for Facebook. On the left side of this page, you will find the tab for Privacy. Click on that.

   

4. You will be shown all your Privacy Settings and Tools on this page. You can see your current settings for this. And with the Edit option, you can also change the settings for everything here. Look at the heading which says ‘How People Find and Contact You’ in the image below.

   

   This is where you will find the next option for controlling who can find you on Facebook.

5. The edit tabs in front of each option allow you to change the settings that have been set by you or are done by default.

   

   To change ‘who can look you up…’ fields for your Facebook account, simply click on the Edit tab in front of these options. This will lead you to a tab, where you can choose either of the three options that appear after you click on the downward facing arrow.

   

   

   The first option which is ‘Everyone’, if selected, then anyone who is on Facebook, whether you know them or not, will be able to search your name in Facebooks search bar. The other two options limit the search for everyone to friends of friends, or just friends, which is slightly better than being found by random people. So choose the option that suits you the best. The suggested setting, if you don’t want anyone except your current friend list to find you in the search bar, would be the third option, i.e. ‘Friends’. No one, other than your friends can look for you in the search bar using your name or your email address.

6. Once you have changed the setting, the icon will look something like this now.

   

   This confirms that the setting for this specific option has been changed.

How Would This Help You

This will keep your privacy settings intact. Not being found on Facebook is something many people prefer. The reasons for this are various. For instance, you don’t want your friends to know you are on Facebook, or you don’t want to add anyone from your family on Facebook and it would be best if they could not find you on Facebook.

Keep Your Privacy Settings Updated

Facebook keeps upgrading the privacy settings for the security of our accounts. And to make sure that our settings are just as we wanted, we need to keep a regular check on the changes that are being made on daily, weekly or monthly basis.