Users used to submit all kinds of personal and private information on Facebook in the early days. In retrospect, we were all green, but it didn’t feel like a potential privacy breach.
Until it became a major data security concern. To safeguard your identity, data, and even those of your friends, the greatest privacy practice now is to keep your Facebook page private.
People will try to look at your Facebook profile even if it is set to private. To keep you safe, we’ll look at how to see private Facebook profiles in this article.
What Is a Facebook Private Profile?
A secret Facebook profile is one that you can’t see unless you’re friends with the owner. When viewing a private Facebook profile, you will not see any user information or, in many cases, a profile photo. The user has disabled any profile options that are visible to the public, making the profile less anonymous but more private.
Several techniques existed in the early days of Facebook that permitted at least a partial glimpse of a private Facebook account. Adding someone as a friend, for example, gives you access to their Facebook profile regardless of their privacy settings.
To acquire access to profile photographs and other uploads, another workaround included changing the Facebook profile URL. Third-party programs that could bypass at least some of Facebook’s privacy settings were also available at the time.
Thankfully, the vast majority of these backdoors and workarounds have been shut down by Facebook. Accessing a secret Facebook profile is exceedingly difficult due to the considerable scrutiny Facebook receives over its members’ privacy. The human connection is now the most vulnerable point: social engineering, weak passwords, and poor personal security.
People try to view private Facebook profiles in a variety of ways.
Even if you have your Facebook profile set to private, others may still try to view it. Worse, making your Facebook profile private does not prevent others from circumventing the privacy settings. After all, they are loopholes. The name gives the game away.
People will utilize a variety of tactics to gain access to a private Facebook profile. Here’s what you should be wary of.
Fake Facebook Friends Number One
The simplest technique is to use a fictitious friend. Someone anxious for access to your private Facebook page may establish a completely false profile in order to befriend you and acquire access to your account.
To persuade you to accept a request, a phony friend profile will use well-known details. For example, the (stolen) profile may include a person of a similar age, have similar hobbies and Likes, or claim that they are from the same area, school, or company; anything to build a phony link.
If someone is specifically targeting your account, they can utilize information from other accounts linked to yours to impersonate a coworker from a different department or a long-lost elementary school acquaintance.
How tough it is to recognize a fake Facebook friend is determined by how you utilize your account. It’s simpler to identify a bogus request if you’re already a highly private person with a tiny number of Facebook pals.
You can manage your Facebook friend settings, such as hiding your friends list and limiting who can send you a friend request.
2. Spyware Applications
Those seeking to examine a private Facebook page moved to more extreme tactics after Facebook made it genuinely difficult to do so. One of the more severe techniques of viewing a private Facebook page is to install malware.
Spyware (what is stalkerware?) and, more recently, stalkerware (what is stalkerware?) put on a victim’s device might provide them direct access to a private Facebook account.
Spyware applications are simple to use. You may rest assured that it won’t work unless someone gains access to your computer or smartphone, or if you are tricked into downloading spyware via a bad email or link.
It’s tough to tell if someone is using a spyware app to watch or replicate a Facebook account on a different device. Especially if the person snooping isn’t changing the device’s behavior or making any adjustments. You do, however, have options!
Take a look at our comprehensive malware eradication tutorial. It will show you how to check if your device is infected with spyware or malware and how to remove it.
3. Theft of Passwords
Password theft is the third way to gain access to a private Facebook profile. The restrictions for creating Facebook passwords are reasonable. A minimum of eight characters is required, which must include capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.
Even with that combination, people will devise a password that is as easy to remember as feasible. It’s easy for someone to guess your password if it’s simple.
The overuse of passwords is another issue. If you reuse a password on numerous sites and one of them has a data breach, you now have several accounts that are susceptible. Because of the large number of data breaches that internet users face, you may not even be aware that your password has been compromised.
For obvious reasons, there is no method to check your password on every site. However, you can use Troy Hunt’s Have I Been Pwned? to see if your email address and password were compromised in a previous data breach.
Conclusion
Otherwise, start using tougher passwords, perhaps with the help of one of these online password generators.