Make Facebook Photos & Posts Private

Do you have private pictures of yourself or your family on Facebook which you don't want the entire world to see? This guide will help you change your Facebook privacy settings to only allow your friends or people you know to see your Facebook photos (and everything else you do). You can even customize the privacy settings of individual albums to share them with a small group of people like your co-workers or relatives.

There are three ways in which you can do this. Either, you can customize each wall post's or photo's settings individually, or set the preferences for specific albums or use a general setting for all posts and photos you have.

1: Choosing an individual wall post's or photo's privacy settings

While posting your photo or post, click on the down arrow left to the post button. Select Custom from the drop-down menu. Using the pop-up, select who you wish to make a post visible to. You can select if you wish to show a post to friends, friends of friends or specific people or a specific list of people.

Select Custom Privacy Options

You can even hide a photo from specific people or a list of people. This will be especially useful in situations where you don't want your colleagues to see a certain picture that makes fun of them or something similar. Normally, when someone is tagged in a photo, every friend of that Facebook user gets to know about it. So, if you chose to make a photo visible to friends and someone is tagged in that picture, all their friends will see that image. To prevent this, uncheck the Friends of those tagged checkmark.

2: Limiting the Audience for an entire album

This is much similar to setting the audience for an individual picture. Just go to your albums, click on the Settings icon on the bottom right of the album whose privacy settings you wish to customize. Then select Custom from the drop down menu. The options Facebook offers are almost the same as those for an individual photo, however there is one difference.

All those people who are tagged and their friends would still be able to see the photos in your album. To prevent this, you will have to change the privacy settings of each individual photo.

3: Making all your Photos and Posts Private

This is the permanent solution against worrying about your Facebook content. However, it doesn't offer much customization options and should only be used if you are sure how you will use Facebook. This is a 2 step process and involves customizing the audience for your past posts as well as those you will make in future.

Step 1: Limiting Past Posts & Photos
Go to your Privacy Settings, and then go to "Limit the audience for posts you've shared with friends of friends or Public?." Then click on the "Limit Old Posts" button. In the pop-up, click Confirm. This is a permanent change and cannot be undone. However, all those tagged and their friends would still be able to see your posts. To prevent this, you will have to change each post's settings individually.

Step 2: Limiting Future Posts and Photos

While in the privacy center, click on "Who can see your future posts?" This will open a non-functional status update box. However, the privacy options that open when clicking on the down arrow right next to the post button are functional and act as global defaults for the content you post on Facebook in the future. Make sure to select friends if you only wish to share content with your friends. You can however, change this according to your needs; but for most people, friends would be the best option. You can further improve your privacy by selecting Custom and then unchecking the check box that appears next to "Friends of those tagged". This will customize your Facebook settings to show your Facebook activity only to your friends and those tagged.

You can also select who gets tagged in your content to further prevent your content from appearing in front of unwanted eyes. To do this, go to your Privacy Settings from the Settings icon located at the top right of the blue Facebook bar. Then, in Privacy Settings, click on Timeline and Tagging. Then under, "How can I manage tags people add and tagging suggestions?", select Enabled to review tags that friends add to your posts.

Facebook's privacy settings take some time to adjust but once you are done, you will never have to worry about your content ending up in front of unwanted users.