As a Facebook user, your primary aim is to socialize, view your friends’ and favorite celebrities’ profiles, and make new friends. But as you navigate through the platform, you might find their accounts to be private.
Such accounts can be very frustrating because you can’t view their profiles, posts, pictures, friends, interactions, and comments. All you might be able to view is perhaps their profile picture and username.
Facebook doesn’t give you a defined procedure for a situation like this, even when running a business page.
Luckily, there are workable methods you could use to view private Facebook accounts. In this article, we break them down for you in the best way possible.
Read on to know what is a private Facebook account, and the methods you could use to view them.
What is a Private Facebook Profile
This is an account that you can’t be able to access the data on its profile such as posts, videos, comments, friend list, and reactions without being friends with the account holder.
The account holder usually activated this feature in the settings section in order to hide their personal data from strangers.
These settings make the following information private;
- Facebook friend’s list
- Locking search engines from accessing data
- Facebook posts
- Profile photo e.t.c
Things that are only left out for view are the profile picture (if they have one), username, and any mutual friends that you may have on Facebook.
5 Methods to View Private Facebook Profiles
Even though Facebook has put in measures to protect data of private profiles, there are several methods you can take to view information about locked Facebook profiles.
Here are some methods you can take to view a private Facebook profile;
1. Send a Friend Request
This is one of the easiest methods you could use to view someone’s private profile on Facebook. Facebook allows friends’ accounts by default to access data on each other’s profiles.
So when you send a friend request and become friends with your intended person, you can view their personal information from their “About Section”. This includes their stories, photos, status updates, friend lists, old and new posts, and so forth.
The downside of this method is that if the user doesn’t accept your friend request, then you cannot view their profile. And also it might take a long time for the user profile to answer your friend request or even ignore your request because Facebook allows them to do so.
2. Use the Social Engineering Technique
One good thing about Facebook account privacy options is their ability to be adjusted to the account owner’s preference. For example, when an account holder sets their account to private, they might choose to lessen their account viewability to only “friends of friends”.
This means that if you and the targeted person have a mutual friend, then you’ll be able to view your target’s profile even when in private.
Having only one mutual friend is enough for this method to work. If you don’t have any, you can try befriending any of his friends on Facebook.
The downside of this method is that you can find your target friend’s list has been restricted, making it hard to find mutual friends. In this case, you can try searching for your target friends outside Facebook on other social media platforms.
3. Try Google Indexing
Google indexing is a method in which google crawls any website like Facebook to find information about a user and includes it into the search algorithms. Basically, it scoops data whether old or new about the targeted person on Facebook that has been set to “public” and displays it online.
To use this method, simply put the name or username of the person you want their information about on the search bar, and include “Facebook” on the inquiry to narrow the search. Then click enter for google to begin its search.
Google will then retrieve information about the person you are looking for on Facebook that has been set to public.
4. Pay a Data Broker
If the above methods aren’t working, you can gain the services of a broker at a certain fee to get the information you are looking for.
Data brokers make their cash by obtaining bulk information on user profiles and selling them to third-party groups. Some of them can help you get the information you want but for a certain fee.
We only recommend this method if it is legal in your state or country of residence to avoid being prosecuted for intrusion into someone’s Facebook profile and gaining data that isn’t yours.
5. Create a “Fake” Facebook Account
Sometimes when you send a friend request to a target’s profile, you may wish to conceal your identity so that you can get the information you are looking for.
To hide your identity, you can create a “fake” Facebook account and send your target a friend request. But we must warn you that this method comes with a risk. If your target has doubts about your identity, they may decide to report or block you, hence minimizing the chances of you viewing their profile.
So, for this trick to work, you must be smart and creative to eliminate things that will cause suspicion and impress your target to influence their decision to accept your friend request.
For example, your target can be a well-known business executive. To get your friend request accepted, you can populate your timeline with posts on the current business trends, challenges facing businesses that you have, upcoming business summits that they are interested in, etc.
Your primary aim is to be liked and your friend request accepted.
Final Take
There are many methods to view a private Facebook profile. With the ones listed above, you will gain instant access. However, choose a method that doesn’t compromise the safety and security of your account, data, and legal actions. Apply each method with the attention that it deserves, and if one fails, try the next one.
Good luck in your activity trying to view a private Facebook profile.
Frequently Asked Questions
Facebook allows a few details to be viewed on a private Facebook profile. They may include the username, profile picture (if available), and mutual friends, if there are any.
If you can see some of the person’s posts and photos, but not all of them despite not being friends, it is possible that the person is changing their privacy settings. A buddy might have requested to share something after the user had already done so, for instance. The user might set their account to private mode but make that one post public.