One of the most prominent inventions of the new millennium, Facebook is known for letting people connect with each other around the world, no matter where anyone is. It is one giant online network that functions as an album in many ways. And it’s even better because it permits reactions, comments and “likes.”
Old friends often get back in touch and reunite through Facebook and its resources. Cousins you had 15 years without knowing anything about, classmates, former coworkers, even old lovers are all out there, connected on Facebook, a tool that lets you contact just about any person in your life. ¡Everyone is on Facebook!
On top of letting you contact old relatives, friends, and acquaintances, Facebook offers an online chat interface to interchange instant messages with those you want to talk to. The page has many functions, features, and opportunities for entertainment that you will not get bored at any time. People can spend hours on Facebook doing different things.
Facebook lets you share pictures, moments and memories with your loved ones, and also to “extend” your network of friends and meet new people with similar interest to yours. However, the platform allows you to manually configure some essential privacy settings so you can choose who has access to your pictures, past posts, information, and memories.
You do not need to worry because you can tweak a few things on your profile and configuration so you can be invisible on Facebook, or at least go “incognito” for the most part and just let people see the necessary things of your profile.
Facebook, social media that revolutionized our lives
Thirteen years ago, a group of Harvard College students led by Mark Zuckerberg and formed by Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes created a social network for Harvard students and based the name on the “face book” directories that universities gave their students.
The network, with a membership initially designed to Harvard staff and students, began growing and the group worked to extend it to other educational institutions: high schools and colleges, mainly. Since 2006, Facebook is available for anyone with at least 13 years old, although the exact number can vary from country to country because of local laws.
This social media and network is available in 140 languages and has over 2 billion monthly active users as of June 2017. Facebook is now a worldwide entity, and a surprisingly high percentage of people has at least heard of it.
It does well in finances, too: it is the third most visited page in the world according to Alexa, and this helps it make a great deal of money through online games and advertising. Facebook had a net income of US$10.217 billion in 2016 and is worth US$64.961 billion in total assets, as of 2016.
Facebook allows users to post photos and videos, comment on friends’ post, react to all kinds of publications (with the “like,” “love,” “sad,” “amused”, “surprised,” and “annoy” buttons). Also, you can post your latest and current thoughts, post on someone else’s wall, get birthday reminders, play thousands of games online, form groups, create pages, and many more things. It acts like a virtual album but with hundreds of add-ons.
How to be invisible on Facebook?
Facebook adjusts so you can configure your privacy settings at your taste. You can control the exposure of your photos, videos, shared content, comments, interactions and every activity you perform in the page.
Some people prefer to remain public and do not “block” their pictures, profiles, and information. They want all kinds of people to be able to see their interactions and do not have a problem with spontaneous friend’s requests from strangers. Maybe they have to keep their profiles public because their work asks for it.
But there are ways to increase privacy so you can decide who has access to your precious pictures, videos and shared content and who gets no right to enjoy what you post, share and comment. After all, you should be able to have the final say in matters like this.
To increase your confidentiality on Facebook, you should take note and follow these steps:
- Click the “Lock” icon at the upper right-hand corner of the layout.
- Click “See more settings.”
- While in “Privacy Settings and Tools,” configure the point to “Only me” in “Who can see my stuff”?
- To prevent people from having access to your previous posts, go to “Limit the audience for posts you’ve shared with friends of friends or public”.
- Click on “Limit past posts” and confirm. With this, only your friends will be able to see your past publications.
- If you want to avoid strangers sending your friends’ requests, put “Friends of Friends” on “Who can send you friend requests”? It usually shows “Everyone.”
- To keep your email address a mystery for other people, do a similar action as in the previous number: put “Friends” on the option “Who can look you up using the email address you provided”? It also usually shows “Everyone.”
- Follow a similar path, but this time it will not be your email but your phone number. Put “Friends” on the question “Who can look you up using the phone number you provided”?
- You surely want to be seen just on Facebook and not in other social media outlets or websites. If this is the case, do not “Allow search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile” in the option “Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile”?
- Go to “Timeline and Tagging Settings” and choose “Only me” in every option but the last.
- Choose “No one” in the “Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded”?
- Turn on the options “Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline?” and “Review tags people add to your posts before the tags appear on Facebook?”
- Go to the option “Followers” in the menu and select “Friends” when it asks you “Who can follow me.” This will make your posts available for the view just for your friends.
- Choose “Off” in the question “Can you see online interest-based ads from Facebook?” that is in the “Ads.”
- Set “No one” on the “Who can see your social actions paired with ads?” option.
How to be invisible on Facebook chat?
You can hide from a friend on Facebook by:
- Opening the chat window.
- Clicking on “gear.”
- Selecting “Go offline.”
To hide from a list of friends you have to create a list of the Friends you want to “ban.” This can be done by:
- Going to your Facebook wall.
- Search the “list” option.
- Click “More.”
- Click on the “Create list” button.
- Name the list.
- Write the names of the people.
- Click on “Create.”
- Open the chat.
- Go to “Options” after clicking on “Gear.”
- Select “Advanced settings.”
- In the option “All your friends see you except…,” enter the name of the list you created.
- Click on “Save.”
Facebook is a fantastic tool, and a user can do many things with it. It allows you to contact friends and friends of friends, send requests, play online and even make money online! You can also share news, interesting articles, photos, and videos with your group of friends or send them directly to anyone you want.
By nature, Facebook is a public sharing network. Since it has so many treats and advantages, some people may use it to play, for example, or to chat with a specific relative, and may not want to be disturbed with chat requests from anybody else.
Some people may want to look at others’ profiles, but prefer to keep theirs hidden from some people, or at least specific albums or other content. For these cases, there are solutions and ways to feel a more private and secure experience: you can be invisible on Facebook.
