Facebook’s privacy settings determine how much information other people can see about your activity on the platform. This includes whether someone can tell if you have searched for or looked up their friends’ profiles. There are a few key factors that impact the visibility of your searching and viewing activity.
Facebook’s Default Privacy Settings
By default, Facebook has privacy settings that limit the visibility of your profile and activity to other users. Some key default settings that relate to search visibility include:
- Your friend list is private.
- The groups you are a member of are visible only to your friends.
- Your liking and commenting activity is visible only to your friends.
- Pages and people you follow are visible only to your friends.
With these default privacy settings, other Facebook users would not be able to see if you have searched for or viewed their friends’ profiles. They would only see activity and connections related to profiles that are visible to “Friends of Friends” or set to a more public viewing audience.
Mutual Friends
If you and the person you are searching for have mutual friends, this gives them slightly more visibility into some of your activity.
For example, if you and the person have a mutual friend, and you look at the mutual friend’s profile, this activity may be visible to the person you searched for in their News Feed or on your mutual friend’s profile.
However, directly searching for or viewing the profile of the person’s friend should not be visible to them, as long as you are not also connected with the friend you searched for.
Browsing in Private Mode
Facebook has a “Private Browsing” option that can hide nearly all of your activity from being visible to others when turned on.
When you browse Facebook in private mode:
- Your online status does not appear to others.
- You don’t show up in chat lists.
- Your messages don’t show as “seen.”
- Your browsing and search history is not stored.
Any searching or viewing of profiles done in a private browsing session would be completely invisible to others. The one exception is if you interact directly with a profile by liking, commenting, etc. while browsing privately.
Extra Privacy Settings
In addition to Facebook’s default privacy settings, you can also limit the audience for individual aspects of your profile.
Settings to make more private include:
- Limiting the audience who can see your friends list.
- Limiting the audience who can see your page likes and follows.
- Turning off search engine indexing of your public profile.
Adjusting these settings to “Only Me” would prevent other users from having any visibility into profiles and connections used for searching purposes.
Can Someone See Your Entire Search History?
In most cases, other users cannot see your full search and browsing history on Facebook.
However, Facebook does maintain logs of this activity internally that it can access. Portions of your search and browsing history used for advertising targeting purposes may also be provided to third parties.
Some users may also grant third-party applications access to search and browsing history when granting extended permissions.
So Can Someone See if You Search Their Friends?
In summary, with Facebook’s default privacy settings, other users cannot see if you have specifically searched for or looked up their friends’ profiles.
The only visibility they might have includes:
- Activity on mutual friends profiles.
- Your profile information and friend connections if you are friends.
To prevent even this limited visibility, browsing in private mode or adjusting your profile privacy settings can hide your search activity from others on Facebook.
Exceptions Where Your Activity May Be Visible
There are a few exceptions where your searching and viewing activity on Facebook can become visible to others:
- You deliberately choose a public viewing audience for all or portions of your profile.
- You interact directly with a profile you find through searching by liking, commenting, etc.
- You grant extended permissions to third-party apps.
- There is a bug or privacy flaw that inadvertently exposes activity.
- Law enforcement or court orders require Facebook to share records of your activity.
However, in most everyday circumstances, your Facebook friends will not be notified if you search for or view their friends’ profiles. You have full control through your privacy settings.
Tips for Keeping Your Search Activity Private
Here are some tips to keep your searching and browsing on Facebook hidden from others:
- Use private mode browsing whenever you want to remain completely invisible.
- Limit your profile audience for sensitive info like friends lists and page likes.
- Be cautious when interacting directly with profiles found by searching.
- Don’t grant wide permissions to third-party apps.
- Periodically check your privacy settings for changes.
Facebook’s Policy on Search Privacy
Facebook’s data policy states that they will not share your browsing and search history on Facebook with advertisers or other partners in a way that is associated with your identity, except with your consent or in special cases such as law enforcement requests.
Here is an excerpt from their data policy explaining how they can use search and browsing information:
“We also collect content, communications and information that other people provide when they use our Products. This can include information about you, such as when others share or comment on a photo of you, send a message to you, or upload, sync or import your contact information.
Device Information
As described below, we collect information from and about the computers, phones, connected TVs and other web-connected devices you use that integrate with our Products, and we combine this information across different devices you use. For example, we use information collected about your use of our Products on your phone to better personalize the content (including ads) or features you see when you use our Products on another device, such as your laptop or tablet, or to measure whether you took an action in response to an ad we showed you on your phone on a different device.
Information we obtain from these devices includes:
Device attributes: information such as the operating system, hardware and software versions, battery level, signal strength, available storage space, browser type, app and file names and types, and plugins.
Device operations: information about operations and behaviors performed on the device, such as whether a??window is foregrounded or backgrounded, or mouse movements (which can help distinguish humans from bots).
Identifiers: unique identifiers, device IDs, and other identifiers, such as from games, apps or accounts you use, and Family Device IDs (or other identifiers unique to Facebook Company Products associated with the same device or account).
Device signals: Bluetooth signals, and information about nearby Wi-Fi access points, beacons, and cell towers.
Data from device settings: information you allow us to receive through device settings you turn on, such as access to your GPS location, camera or photos.”
This shows that Facebook does store records of your search and browsing activity but aims to keep it anonymous and not associated with your identity when using it for purposes like advertising targeting.
However, this information could be tied to your identity if required for legal reasons or an investigation.
Can You View Someone’s Search History on Facebook?
Since other users cannot see your full search and browsing history, you also cannot see the history for other accounts. However, here are a few ways you can see some information about another user’s recent Facebook activity:
- News Feed – See recent interactions with posts, pages, profiles etc.
- Mutual Friends – View mutual friend profiles to see their interactions.
- Followed Pages – See pages and public figures they follow.
- Friends List – If visible, see their friend connections.
While this shows some information about their interests and connections, it only reflects public visible activity, not full search and browsing history.
Can Facebook Admins See Your Search History?
Facebook employees and administrators generally cannot see your full search and browsing history or activity in detail. However, they may have access to some aggregate data about user search patterns or query volume.
For legal reasons or investigations into violations of terms, some searches and activity could be examined. Overall though, visibility into search and browsing history is limited for Facebook employees, similar to other users.
Takeaways About Facebook Search Privacy
Here are some key takeaways about Facebook search privacy settings:
- Your searches for people are invisible to others by default.
- Interacting with a profile can make your search visible.
- Browsing privately, limiting your audience, and being cautious about apps help maintain privacy.
- Facebook uses anonymous, aggregate search data internally for things like ads.
- You have control over most of your search visibility to others.
While Facebook collects search and browsing data, they aim to keep individual activity anonymous. Adjusting privacy settings gives you control over what others can see about your profile and connections.
Conclusion
Facebook is designed to give users control over their privacy. Default settings prevent other users from seeing your search and browsing activity in most cases. Private browsing mode, limiting your profile audience, declining app permissions, and being cautious about interacting with search results can further protect your search privacy.
While Facebook does store records of aggregate search patterns, they avoid associating browsing history with individual identities. Overall, it is unlikely your Facebook friends will find out if you happen to search their list of friends.