Hide from friends or stalkers on Facebook

Facebook allows you to stay in touch with people you had said goodbye to and never expected to meet, not even virtually. However, this functionality can turn into a problem if some old friend, acquaintance or boyfriend starts to break the boxes, sending messages, spying on everything that is published, sometimes even becoming annoying; in a word, one can easily become a victim of stalkers. It stalking today it is prosecuted by law even in Italy only that the police cannot be expected to be behind every complaint for having received a bad word, an insult or because a person has sent too many messages. However, before going through the courts, you can try to discourage the stalker by blocking him completely on Facebook.

In this guide we will show you what to do to hide from a friend or a harasser on Facebook, so as to never hear it again and prevent it from always sending messages or reading everything we do or say, also blocking access to information that we want to keep secret (such as the city we live in).

READ ALSO: How to block someone on Facebook and what it means to them

How to hide on Facebook

To avoid unpleasant people and block any possibility of annoying us, we carefully follow all the steps described in the chapters below. Obviously, nothing prevents you from denouncing anyone who annoys every day and every hour, but to have a bit of tranquility it takes very little.

Create a black list of contacts

On Facebook it is possible to block both unwelcome people by opening the Facebook site, logging in with our account, pressing the arrow at the top right, taking us to the menu Settings and privacy -> Settings, opening the menu Block someone and clicking on the item Edit list, present in the section List with Restrictions.

In the window that opens, enter the name and surname or the Emails of the users to be blocked. If there are several people with the same name, a list of matching profiles will be displayed to choose from, so as to avoid cases of homonymy.

Block users via their profile

On each Facebook user profile we can report a person by pressing the icon with the three dots (next to the icon Message), by pressing on Receive assistance or report profile, and choosing the most suitable problem. In most cases, just select Intimidation or bullying and get a good filtering system on that person, who will no longer be able to see anything of us; in any case, a window will also open where you can choose whether to completely block the profile of the person reported.

Blocking the person will prevent any interaction or relationship or message between you and this person; it is also possible to remove him from the friends list, so as to no longer see his profile and hide any communication system available on Facebook.

Block messages

If the person you want to hide from sends us private messages on Messenger, you can report it and block it by pressing on the user’s name in the chat window, by pressing on There is a problem and choosing which problem we encounter.

After choosing, we will be offered to block the user and remove him from the list of friends, so as to solve any problem. Please note that when we block a friend or any other Facebook user there will be no warning or notification to that person but your profile will not be visible to him and, in the same way, you will no longer be able to see his profile. Both will be invisible to each other, with the exception of third party applications.

Make your Facebook profile private

If you are being heavily persecuted by a stalker it is likely that, noticing that you are blocked, they will create a new profile each time only to return to the office. In this case one should consider the possibility of make the profile private so that it still remains visible to friends but so that strangers can’t find or write to us. To make the Facebook profile private, let’s go to Settings and privacy -> Settings and taking us to the section Privacy.

For all items in the section How people find and contact you we use Friends O Friends of Friends (the only selectable for friend requests). To make the profile even more secure, let’s go to Profile and add tags and change all the items on Friends or his No (only exception Control, where we can set Yup); to conclude we open our profile page and click on Edit profile or Edit details to hide personal information (we can put on Friends O Only me).

Unfortunately you can’t completely hide a profile: Facebook says that “your name, profile picture, gender, and network are and will always be open to everyone“. An updated and detailed one is written in another article privacy options guide to choose what to show to others.

Conclusions

It goes without saying that Facebook is a tool through which a person can easily become a stalker, perhaps even without thinking of being one. Just as you shouldn’t immediately panic about some messages or insults, it is also true that, in serious cases (and by serious I mean months of forced annoyance or repeated threats), contacting the authorities could be a necessary move. For those who fear having too intrusive friends or annoying people, it is better not to add everyone without criteria and remove where necessary; if this is not enough, we make the profile private and use the tools offered by Facebook to block any message, post or any attempt at spying.

Still on the subject of security and respect for privacy on Facebook, we can also read our guides How to unsubscribe from Facebook and delete the profile e Avoid getting your Facebook password stolen and account theft.