Social networks often change their look and menu names, but the questions to ask stay the same: who can see what I post, who can find me, what can others do with my content, what does the platform know about me. This guide follows exactly those questions, so you can apply it to whichever service you use.
1. Who sees what you post
The first setting to check is the default audience for new posts. Many platforms let you choose between public, friends or followers, custom lists or only you. A few points deserve attention:
- A private profile restricts content to approved followers, but your profile photo, name and sometimes your bio remain visible to everyone.
- Old posts keep the audience chosen when they were published. Many services offer a feature to limit the visibility of past content in bulk.
- Stories and temporary content can be saved by viewers with a screenshot, even if they disappear from the platform.
2. Who can find you
| Setting | Risk if left open | Cautious choice |
|---|---|---|
| Lookup by email or phone | Anyone with your number finds your profile | Friends only or nobody |
| Search engine indexing | Your profile appears when someone searches your name | Off |
| Contact suggestions | You are suggested to strangers with mutual contacts | Limited |
| Friends or followers list | Reveals your network of relationships | Visible to you or friends only |
Lookup by phone number is especially sensitive: your number is often known to many people, and linking it to a profile makes unwanted contact easier.
3. What others can do
Tags and mentions
Someone can post a photo you appear in and tag you, making it visible to their contacts and sometimes to yours as well. Most platforms let you:
- approve tags before they appear on your profile;
- limit who can mention you;
- remove the tag from someone else's content.
Removing the tag does not delete the photo, which stays on the profile of whoever posted it. If the photo shows you and you did not consent, you can ask the person to remove it and, if necessary, report it to the platform.
Messages and comments
Consider who can send you direct messages, who can comment on your posts and whether to filter offensive words. Limiting messages to accounts you follow reduces scams and harassing contacts.
4. What the platform knows
Personalised advertising
In the advertising settings you can usually see the interests the platform has attributed to you, the companies that uploaded customer lists you appear in and the outside activity reported to it. You can remove interests, turn off the use of data from other sites and apps and limit ads based on sensitive categories.
The Digital Services Act, Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, strengthens these tools: online platforms must tell you why you are seeing a particular advert and may not show advertising based on profiling that uses special categories of data, such as health, sexual orientation or political opinions.
Address book and location
If you once authorised contact uploading, your contacts' numbers may have been stored. Look for the option to stop syncing and delete uploaded contacts. Also check your location history and the automatic addition of places to posts.
Download your data
Almost every platform offers a feature to download an archive of your data. Even if you do not want to switch service, looking at it once is instructive: you will see logins, devices, searches, advertising interests and recorded interactions. It is a practical application of the rights of access and portability under Articles 15 and 20 GDPR.
5. Account security
Privacy is also lost when someone else gets into your account. In the security settings:
- turn on two-step verification;
- check the list of logged-in devices and log out any you do not recognise;
- review third-party apps connected to the account, such as games or quizzes, and remove those you do not use.
A ten-minute review
- Set the default audience for new posts.
- Limit the visibility of past posts.
- Turn off phone lookup and external indexing.
- Turn on tag approval.
- Review advertising interests and off-platform activity data.
- Stop address book syncing.
- Check devices and connected apps.
In short
- There are four key questions: who sees, who finds you, what others do, what the platform knows.
- Old posts keep their original audience: limit their visibility in bulk.
- Tag approval lets you decide what appears on your profile.
- The Digital Services Act bans profiled advertising based on sensitive data and requires transparency about ads.
- Downloading your data archive shows concretely what the platform keeps.