How to Hide Your Likes on Facebook 2013

Liking a page on Facebook has become quite a personal statement. Restaurants, shops, sports teams, charities, support groups, you name it, and someone is liking it on Facebook, and those people's friends are probably judging them for it.

Your friends and others can make assumptions about you just by looking at the things you like on Facebook. For instance, say you've just suddenly added likes for 15 different brands of vodka on Facebook. Your friends may begin to wonder if you might be turning into a raging alcoholic based on your new likes. In reality, you we're just liking the pages so you might get some coupons or other free stuff.

No matter what your likes are, you can choose to make a statement and make them public or you can go "off the like grid" and keep all your likes to yourself, so that you don't come home to a surprise family intervention because your Aunt told your mom about the 15 liquor brand likes you just added.

Let's look at what you can do to keep some things you like public while hiding other things that you don't want everyone knowing that you like.

Types of Likes:

Thee are several types of likes on Facebook. If you take a look at your profile, you will see nine different categories: Music, Books, Movies, Television, Games, Sports Teams, Activities, Interests, and Other Pages.

You can control who see's what you like at the category level, but you can't hide individual things that you like. For example, you can decide to show or hide Sports Teams, but you can't hide the fact that you like an individual team.

How to Make Your Likes Private:

1. Log onto Facebook and click on your Timeline.

2. From your timeline, click on "Likes".

3. Click on the "Edit" button on the right side of the screen on the "Favorites" page.

4. You will see nine different like categories on the page (Music, Books, Movies, Television, Games, Sports Teams, Activities, Interests, and Other Pages). Click the blue triangle next to the head and shoulders icon for the category you wish to make private.

5. Click the level of privacy you wish to set for the like visibility of the category. Your options include: Public, Friends, Only Me or Custom. If you want to hide your likes from everyone but yourself, choose "Only Me".


You can choose different restrictions for each of the nine categories but unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, you can't hide the fact that you like individual pages. It's all or nothing for each category. Perhaps Facebook will add more granular privacy controls for likes and you'll be able to hide the fact that you like certain things such as Shi Tzu puppies dressed in eighteenth century clothing, but until Facebook adds this feature you are forced to show all your strange likes or not show any of them.

If you want to learn how to keep other aspects of your Facebook profile on the down low, check out these other articles on Facebook Privacy and Security:


Facebook Safety Tips for Teens
One final note: Facebook is famous for making sweeping changes to how your privacy settings are managed. It is a good idea to periodically check your privacy options about once a month or so to see if Facebook has changed anything. There's always a chance that you may have been "opted in" to something that you would rather be "opted out" of.