How to Block Searches of Your Facebook Profile

This article explains how to change your Facebook privacy settings to limit who can look you up via your email address, phone number, or even a Google search of your name.

How to Limit Searches of Your Facebook Profile via Email Address, Phone Number, and Search Engines

You can customize privacy settings from Facebook.com in a web browser or via the Facebook mobile app. Here's how to control who can find you on the web:

1. In the upper-right corner, select the down-arrow and choose Settings & Privacy.

2. From the drop-down menu, select Settings.
   

3. From the menu on the left, select Privacy.

4. Scroll down to the How People Find and Contact You section. You can customize the following search settings:

   • Who can look you up using the email address you provided? Choose Friends, Friends of friends, or Only Me to limit these types of searches.
   • Who can look you up using the phone number you provided? Choose Friends, Friends of friends, or Only Me to limit these types of searches.
   • Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile? Select Edit and uncheck Allow search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile.

   If you turn off permission to allow search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile, you might have to wait a while for it to go into effect. Your profile might still be searchable in search engines for a period of time after you turn this setting off.

Control Privacy Settings Using the Facebook App

You can also control who can find your profile from the Facebook app:

1. From the bottom menu (iOS) or top menu (Android), tap the Menu icon.
   

2. Tap Settings & Privacy.
   

3. Tap Settings.
   

4. Scroll down to the Audience and Visibility section and tap How People Find and Contact You.
   

5. Tap one of the options to set your privacy preferences.
   

Block Searches for Professional Reasons

If the same email address or phone number that you use for your Facebook account is used often for, say, professional purposes, you might want to prevent any professional connections you make from finding you on Facebook. This might especially be the case if you use Facebook mainly for personal reasons and don't want to receive friend requests from your professional connections.

Block Searches for Privacy

Likewise, if you're an online influencer or high-profile individual, you do not want to be receiving Facebook friend requests or messages from people you don't know. If your public email address or phone number is associated with your Facebook account, or if your Facebook profile can easily be found in search engines, you'll make it easier for fans and followers to connect with you via your Facebook profile.

Even if neither of the two scenarios explained above applies to you, it can be a good idea to limit your Facebook searchability as an extra privacy precaution on the off chance that someone does try to search for you via email, phone number, Google, or another search engine.

Recommended: Limit Who Can Send You Friend Requests

If you're serious about preventing strangers or unwanted people from sending you friend requests, you might want to consider blocking people who aren't mutual friends of your current friends from doing so.

You can do this from the same section where you customized the above privacy settings (under How People Find and Contact You in Privacy/Privacy Settings). Change Who can send you friend requests from Everyone to Friends of friends.

So if you come up in Facebook search results when someone you don't know searches for your name or other personal information, they won't be able to send you a friend request unless they're already friends with at least one of your friends.