Many private Facebook profiles can be read like an open book. Even if we limit public view in all possible options, some information about us will still be publicly available. Suffice it to say that our data is already exposed enough on the Internet. However, do I have insight into who viewed my FB profile? Whose side is the service on in this case?
Who Viewed my Facebook Profile? Is it Possible?
Unfortunately, I don’t have good news for you right from the start. Unless, of course, you’re here to learn how to remain anonymous when viewing other people’s social media profiles. However, if so, it’s quite good for you, because Facebook officially does not allow us to find out who views your Facebook profile. Theoretically, you don’t have to make much effort.
You can find information about this on the website itself, in the Help and Support tab available under your profile picture visible in the upper right corner of the browser screen. To read it, you must then open the Help Center and the Privacy tab from the menu on the left. Then click Control who can see what you share on Facebook and find the Your Timeline paragraph.
Allowing myself a bit of personal insight at this point, I will say that this decision is at least puzzling to me. The very fact that the answer was placed in the Privacy tab seems quite paradoxical. Whose privacy is being taken care of here?
I must admit that since my phone was stolen, in an era when it already seems absurd, my attitude towards security has become even more radical, and towards Facebook’s approach – ambivalent. Especially since all you need to do is search for a given person via a Facebook browser and you will have complete insight into their activity, including comments and group entries.
Perhaps there is a good justification for this fact, but it did not occur to me, which still vividly remembers the recent unpleasant experiences. If the reasons are obvious to you, I will be happy to hear opposing arguments.
Ok, enough of these moral considerations. As we know, there is nothing on the Internet that cannot be avoided. So although Facebook gives greater confidentiality to visitors to our profile, it does not mean that there are no alternative methods to circumvent this state of affairs. But is it worth using them? Especially since Facebook itself calls for a boycott of them?
Applications and Plug-ins to Check who viewed our Facebook Profile
The most popular and simplest way to find out who viewed our Facebook profile is to install a dedicated mobile application or browser plug-in. However, don’t count on much and don’t expect to find a miracle solution in the Play Store or Chrome Web Store. It’s hard to find anything worth recommending here. Moreover, none of the solutions deserve a guarantee, especially when a moment earlier we talk about high respect for security and privacy issues.
Most of the available overlays or programs are nothing more than another attempt to extort your data. And let’s face it, Facebook is a good source of knowledge about you. So I think it’s a game not worth the effort. However, if the desire for knowledge is still stronger than common sense or you put your motivation behind the need to find out who viewed your Facebook profile above the possible consequences, keep in mind that a giant like Facebook can take care of the collected data.
That’s why the vast majority of information provided by these types of applications is false anyway. They trick you with promises to find out who has viewed your profile, including Messenger, and in the best case scenario, they will end up spamming your wall with unwanted content. In the worst case, it may involve theft of sensitive data or profile takeover and an attempt to extort money from your friends.
But increasing your followers is also increasingly difficult due to the competitive world that exists and the number of options there are in the same niche. For this reason, are you tired of promoting your Facebook page with unwanted results? The truth is that there are different options, such as buying Facebook likes UK or promoting yourself on other social networks linked to Facebook.
Throughout this article you will be given some tips that will help you achieve your goal with this social network.
Create High-Quality Content Regularly
One of the most important factors when it comes to gaining more followers for Facebook is, without a doubt, creating high-quality content. You won’t be able to have followers if you have an empty feed.
Therefore, it is recommended to share images and videos that are visually attractive and relevant to your audience, the one you have carved out by focusing on a niche. In addition to having those publications that have high quality, another of the most important issues is to publish regularly. This means that you try to have at least one post per week, although it would be best if it were between two and three times.
In case you don’t have time to do it, one of the options is to schedule it through the different applications that exist and are linked to Facebook. That way, the app will do it for you.
Use Facebook Analytics
But beyond the action, you also have to do something during this process that is even more important: study and analyze your audience. Yes, by using the Facebook Analytics tool you will be able to see and understand the performance of the Facebook page you manage. What information does it offer?
It offers data and details that show you how users behave, as well as audience demographics, engagement metrics… and with the ability to request anything you want, including page views, likes, shares, comments, post reach and click-through rates. In short, the performance of the page and which spots work best. This way, you can adapt your content strategy to audience preferences.
Interact with the Audience
There is no doubt that one of the best ways to gain more likes on Facebook is by interacting with your audience. How to do it? Well, for example, organize contests or giveaways on Facebook with prizes that are attractive to your audience. When organizing it, you can put among the requirements that participants like your page.
Also, another possibility is to encourage your Twitter followers to create and share content related to the brand.
How Else can I Find out who Views my Facebook Profile?
Some time ago, there was an almost hacker method circulating on the Internet to see who views our Facebook profile. Of course, I’m exaggerating, but the fact is that it required the use of the source code of your profile subpage. It was enough to search for the “InitialChatFriendsList ” command and copy the received user IP codes to the URL preceded by the Facebook website opened in a new tab.
Don’t waste your time, out of curiosity and a sense of editorial duty; I checked the validity of this method for you, although it was basically just to confirm the obvious. Yes, it is not active now. For a technology giant like Facebook, it was not a problem to take care of sensitive parts of the source code of its website, especially since it is 2023.
So if for a moment you were hoping to play Anonymous and discover in a geeky way who is spying on you on FB, I am very sorry that I was the one to disabuse you of your mistake. However, you have nothing to regret. Everything seems to indicate that the InitialChatFriendsList variable only showed the users you interacted with the most at a given time. Either way, it was quite an interesting list and could tell us something about the algorithms’ reasoning. No wonder Facebook carefully hid this information.
At this point, I would also like to warmly warn you against promising-looking websites with “preview” in their name. I deliberately avoid their full addresses so as not to support activities of questionable integrity. In any case, be vigilant and wary whenever you are asked to send an SMS in exchange for the opportunity to see who visited your FB profile.
How to Protect your Privacy on FB
The previous paragraph only confirms that at the moment we cannot talk about any proven method of tracking people viewing our Facebook profiles. Therefore, the only thing you can really do for your privacy on Facebook is to simply take full control over publications on your timeline, manage the visibility of your data, including shared content, and block it from being displayed to specific people. If your list of profiles to exclude is quite long, this will be a tedious task, but basically the only sensible solution.
Fortunately, Facebook has a wide range of settings for viewing your data and content, thanks to which:
- You can decide who sees or doesn’t see both your posts and the posts of other people in which you are tagged.
- You can check the content shared on your profile by others in advance and approve it later.
- You can even hide comments containing specific words that you specify.
Facebook also allows you to globally restrict access to your profile to certain people. In this case, however, only for content intended for Friends. Anything you set to Public will still be visible to everyone. Unless you decide to block someone for good. However, you must take into account that this goes hand in hand with completely breaking off your relationship with this person, at least on Facebook. She won’t even be able to write to you on Messenger.
How to Check who Viewed your Facebook Story, i.e. Managing Public Posts
Although, as we already know, the general insight into who views our private profile on Facebook is quite poor, the situation is completely different in the case of public content. In this case, I mainly mean stories and reels shared in any form from our account. Here, Facebook is definitely closer to the publisher’s side and allows authors to see who viewed their story.
To check who viewed your Facebook story:
- Switch to the News page view.
- From the Stories level, open your material.
- Click on the Recipients function located in the lower left corner of the report, where the full list will be displayed.
Additionally, if your private profile is running in professional mode, thanks to which you can collect followers from outside your circle of friends, their profiles will also be displayed in the recipients of your stories.
How to Check and who Sees Likes on FB Stories
In the case of Facebook Stories, you also see all the reactions to the content you have shared. You can see them from Messenger, where you can also check who is following your content. To do this, click on the Stories category from the bottom menu in the Messenger application. In turn, likes, hearts and other emojis that your story received will be displayed as a message from the specific person it came from.
Summary
Officially, Facebook does not provide any way to find out who is viewing our profile. However, it allows you to see who viewed the content we shared and even how they reacted to it. Which proves once again that privacy on Facebook is a very ambiguous and controversial issue?
On the one hand, it may seem strange to demand respect for confidentiality from social media, whose users often share the most intimate moments of their lives. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that someone’s anonymity is protected here. Are you sure it’s the right website? I have doubts.
Fortunately, we have extensive settings for the visibility of shared content. So in the end, although I can’t check who viewed my FB profile, at least I can decide who definitely won’t.
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