Social media is a great way to stay connected with friends and family. But by default, most platforms share far more of your personal information than you probably realize — with advertisers, data brokers, and sometimes complete strangers.
The good news is you can fix most of this in about 15 minutes. Let’s walk through each platform.
Facebook collects the most data of any social network. Here’s how to limit it:
1
Make your profile private. Go to Settings → Privacy. Set “Who can see your future posts?” to Friends. Then click “Limit Past Posts” to apply the same to everything you’ve already posted.
2
Lock down your personal info. Go to your profile and click “About.” For each piece of information (phone number, email, birthday, hometown), click the edit icon and change the audience to Only Me or Friends.
3
Turn off facial recognition. Go to Settings → Face Recognition and set it to No.
4
Limit ad tracking. Go to Settings → Ads → Ad Settings. Turn off “Ads based on data from partners” and “Ads based on your activity on Facebook Company Products.”
While you’re in Facebook Settings, click “Download Your Information” to see exactly how much data Facebook has about you. It can be eye-opening.
Instagram is owned by Meta (Facebook’s parent company), so it shares a lot of the same data collection habits.
1
Switch to a private account. Go to Settings → Privacy → Account Privacy, and turn on Private Account. Now only people you approve can see your posts.
2
Control your Activity Status. Go to Settings → Privacy → Activity Status and turn it off. This prevents people from seeing when you were last online.
3
Limit data sharing. Go to Settings → Accounts Center → Your information and permissions. Review what data is being shared across Meta’s apps and turn off what you’re not comfortable with.
X (formerly Twitter)
1
Protect your posts. Go to Settings → Privacy and Safety → Audience and tagging, and turn on Protect your posts. Only your followers will see your tweets.
2
Disable personalization. Go to Settings → Privacy and Safety → Data sharing and personalization. Turn off all the options here to reduce tracking.
3
Turn off location tagging. Go to Settings → Privacy and Safety → Location information, and make sure “Add location information to your posts” is off.
The Settings You Should Always Turn Off
Regardless of which platform you use:
- Location sharing — No social media app needs to know where you are in real time
- Contact syncing — Don’t let apps upload your entire phone’s contact list
- Ad personalization — Reduces the amount of data collected about your browsing habits
- Search engine indexing — Prevents your profile from showing up in Google searches
Remember: even with the best privacy settings, anything you post online could potentially be seen by someone. Don’t share anything on social media that you wouldn’t want on a billboard.
Quick Win
If you only do one thing after reading this, make your accounts private. It takes 30 seconds per platform and immediately limits who can see your posts.