The easiest way to protect the privacy of your Facebook profile is to be selective in who you choose to accept friend requests from or send requests to. You can have your publicly viewable profile locked down so that almost no information is available to people who aren’t on your friends list. However, occasionally there may be someone you want to keep from even seeing the most basic aspect of your profile. You can achieve this by blocking the person, which is done by simply going to their profile (do a search in facebook and click them), and scrolling down until you see the option to block user on the left side of your profile.
The first thing to know about blocking someone is that you’ll also be blocking yourself from seeing their profile (which shouldn’t be an issue if you don’t want them to see yours.) You will not see the person in friends lists on mutual friends profiles, and you will not be visible to the blocked person in friends lists. If you comment on a mutual friends wall, it will not be visible to the blocked person – but if you comment on something the mutual friend posted, the blocked person WILL be able to see your comment, and vice versa.
Blocking is done on an individual basis, meaning you need to either visit each specific persons profile and click block user, or go to your block list (located under privacy settings) and put in the name of the person you wish to block. If you’re unable to find the person you wish to block, it’s possible they’ve already blocked you. If you’re unsure, you can also block someone by email address, if you know any email address that has ever been entered on their profile or associated with their profile.
There is no notification of any kind sent to a person who has been blocked, so there’s no need to worry if you have any concerns about backlash, the person who has been blocked simply will not see you. Also, it may seem obvious but is worth mentioning, blocking someone on Facebook applies ONLY to Facebook, not to any other part of the internet. If anyone is ever abusive to you on Facebook, you should report it to Facebook. There is a link for this on each person’s profile right by where you block the user. Don’t do this unless you honestly feel harassed or abused however, as false accusations can be taken seriously and backfire.
If you block someone and decide to unblock them later, you can easily do so – but keep in mind you’ll need to resend them a friend request if you want to have them on your friends list again. To unblock someone, you’ll need to go into your privacy settings and remove them from your block list.
