Is It Easy To Change Your TikTok Account Privacy Settings?

Balancing the optimal user experience with people’s ability to protect their privacy is difficult for any social media platform. No system is perfect, but TikTok is perhaps the best platform in the industry when it comes to letting account owners be as public or private as they’d like on the app.

There are more than a dozen privacy settings that allow TikTok users to customize their visibility and determine what types of interactions others can have with them. And once you know how to find them, they’re easy to change.

Here are the 12 most important privacy settings to know about. Most can be accessed from the same screen in the TikTok app.

1. Private vs. Public Account

When your TikTok account is public, any other user can see the content you post and your TikTok profile. You might choose to use a pseudonym as your TikTok username, so people might not know who you are, but your TikTok videos and virtually everything else about your activity on the app are easily visible to the app’s 2+ billion users.

If you have a private account, access to your TikTok posts and profile is dramatically limited. Most details in your profile and all of your TikTok content can only be seen by the users who follow you, and no one is allowed to become one of your TikTok followers until you approve their request. Non-followers also can’t download your videos or create Stitches or Duets with them.

Teens between the ages of 13 and 18 automatically receive a private account when they join TikTok. (They have to be at least 13 to sign up.) Once they turn 16, they’re allowed to manually change their account to a public one. Adults receive a public account when signing up; they can change to a private account at any time.

Here’s how to switch between a public and private TikTok presence.

1. Tap on the “Profile” icon at the bottom right of your home screen to reach your profile page.
2. Click the “Menu” icon at the top right of the profile screen (the icon is three horizontal lines).
3. Choose “Settings and privacy” from the popup window.
4. Click the “Privacy” link. You’ll see a toggle switch at the top of the next screen labeled “Private account,” which can be set to the left to choose a public account or to the right for a private one.

Stay on the Privacy page as we move through this list. Most of the controls we’ll discuss are on this screen or can be reached from it.

2. Activity Status

The next setting on the Privacy screen, “Activity status,” controls whether your mutual followers (people who follow you and who you follow back) can see if you’re currently on the app and when you were last active on TikTok.

If you want to stay off the radar while you’re surfing, shopping, or creating content, set the toggle switch to the left. If you want your mutual followers (often called “moots”) to know that you’re online and available, set it to the right; that shows them a green dot (or a notification of when you were last on the app) next to your profile picture.

3. Suggesting Your Account

TikTok regularly shows users lists of accounts that they might like to follow. If you don’t want to appear on those lists, tap the “Suggest your account to others” link. You’ll see toggle switches that let you turn off the app’s ability to recommend your TikTok account to contacts from your phone and from your Facebook account.

For added privacy, also click the “Sync contacts and Facebook friends” link on the Privacy page, and turn off the toggle switches that sync your contacts and Facebook friends with your TikTok account.

4-10. Interaction Controls

This set of options on the Privacy page allows you to choose how other users can engage with you on the platform. From who can download and reuse your content to who can see the lists of people you follow and videos you’ve liked, you’re able to customize your TikTok experience with the controls available in the “Interactions” section.

11. Location Services

The TikTok algorithms determine which content you see on your For You page (FYP) and the ads you’re shown, and one factor in their decisions is where you’re connecting from.

You can disable the app’s ability to find your location by clicking on the “Location Services” link on the Privacy page and choosing the “Never” option. (Note: the link won’t be visible if you already have location services disabled on your phone.)

12. Sharing Your Data

TikTok shares much of your account information with other websites that you connect to with your TikTok account — and those other sites and services continue to have access to your personal info unless you take action to block that access.

Regularly check app permissions by going to Settings and privacy > Security & permissions > Apps and services permissions, scan the list of sites that your data is being shared with, and remove any that you don’t trust or don’t want to have your data.

 

The more proactive you are in protecting your privacy on the system, the more “anonymous” you can be on the app. And even if you want to have a public account that everyone can see and interact with, it’s helpful to know where you can change your settings if you ever run into a problem with stalkers, hackers, or other problematic users.