How to Lock Down Your Social Media Privacy

Updated 12 July 2026 · 7 min read

Social media is where most people leak the most about themselves — often without realising it. The default settings on most platforms favour visibility, not privacy. A short, deliberate review of each account dramatically cuts what a stranger can piece together about you.

Start with an outsider's view

Before changing anything, see what the public sees. Log out (or use a private browser window) and look at your own profiles, or search your name and usernames. This is exactly what a recruiter, a scammer, or a curious stranger would do. Run your handle through the MyRecon username tool to see how many platforms carry it, then decide which accounts actually need to be public.

Fix discoverability first

The most overlooked settings control how easily strangers find you:

• Turn off "find me by phone number or email." This feature lets anyone who has one detail about you locate your profile — a favourite tool of stalkers and scammers.
• Limit search-engine indexing of your profile where the platform allows it.
• Review who can send you requests or messages, and restrict it to friends-of-friends or people you know.

Set your audience deliberately

Decide, per platform, whether your account is public or private, and make future posts default to the smallest audience that makes sense. For personal accounts, private is almost always the right choice. Then check the past: most platforms offer a "limit past posts" tool that retroactively restricts everything you have already shared to your current friends only — a fast way to clean up years of oversharing in one click.

Prune what's already there

Old content is a rich source for anyone profiling you. Work through:

• Profile fields — remove your birth year, phone number, home town, and employer if they do not need to be public.
• Tagged photos — turn on tag review so nothing is added to your profile without approval.
• Old posts — delete or restrict anything that reveals sensitive details or that you would not post today.
• Location history — clear it where the platform stores it, and disable ongoing collection.

Cut off third-party access

Over the years you have probably logged into dozens of apps and quizzes using "Sign in with Facebook/Google." Each one may still have access to your data. Open the "connected apps" or "apps and websites" section of each account and revoke everything you no longer use. This also shrinks the blast radius if any of those third parties is breached.

Separate your identities

If you would rather not have all your accounts tied together, use different usernames and a different email for accounts you want kept separate — because a shared handle is exactly how these profiles get correlated. Our guide on username OSINT shows how easily a reused handle links accounts across the web.

Make it routine

Platforms change their settings and defaults regularly, often resetting things toward more sharing. Put a reminder in your calendar to re-check your privacy settings a couple of times a year, and to review anything new the platform has added. Pair this with the broader steps in our digital-footprint guide, and you will stay well ahead of what most people ever expose.

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