Privacy on TikTok: Private Account, Who Watches the Videos, Ads and More

If you have just landed on the TikTok social network, it is mandatory that you follow certain recommendations to set up your account. One of the most essential? Know how to control and manage the privacy of your profile on the platform. And today we are going to show you how. Be comfortable.

Privacy control, mandatory

When we enter a new social network, one of the first aspects that should concern us the most, beyond how a certain trick is done or certain content is published, is that of privacy. This will determine the scope that others will have to our information and what will circulate and what not about us on the internet.

Privacy on TikTok

It seems obvious, but many people still do not know 100% of all the possibilities of the social network they use in this regard: they do not know that Instagram can be used to hide Instagram only for certain people, that on Facebook you can decide that you only Add friends of your friends or that in TikTok you can prevent your profile from appearing as recommended to other people you don’t know anything about.

Precisely today we are going to focus on this last social network, pointing out all the main aspects that you should know if you want to have 100% control of what other people know and see about you. Aim. It is important.

Privacy settings on TikTok

We will detail different actions below that can be managed from the app to decide to what degree you want to be accessible to other users of the TikTok social network. In all the steps that we will describe below we take for granted the most basic: that you are inside the app and you have logged in with your credentials.

· Private account or not

The most basic of all: deciding whether to set up your private account. By doing so, only the users that you approve will be able to follow and see your videos and your likes. In case you already have followers in your account, this modification does not affect them:

  1. Go to your Me profile (lower right corner) and once inside tap on the three points in the upper right corner.
  2. Choose Privacy and security.
  3. In Visibility you will see “Private account”.
  4. Activate it.
  5. Ready. You already have your private account.

TikTok - Seguridad y privacidad

· Prevent them from finding your account

In addition to deciding whether you want your account to be public or private, you can also avoid whether you want TikTok to propose you to other people . The platform usually suggests its users to follow accounts that it thinks they will like based on their likes and views. By default, yours will be proposed, but you can prevent this from happening by “getting out” of this suggestion system :

  1. Once inside the app, tap on Me (to enter your profile), located in the lower right corner.
  2. Tap the three dots in the upper right corner.
  3. Enter Privacy and security.
  4. In Visibility, go to the second option “Allow others to find me”.
  5. Turn it off.
  6. Your account will not be suggested to other people again.

TikTok - Seguridad y privacidad

· Limit who can see each video

It is one thing that nobody can watch your videos because your account is private and quite another that you have your public profile but then you have certain content that you only want certain people to see . TikTok allows you to create videos that when published are only visible to a small number of people and applying this function is as easy as following these steps:

  1. Record the video you want on TikTok and follow the editing steps until you have it ready.
  2. Once in the panel before publishing, tap on ” Who can watch this video ” -it is the first option just under the text description and the photo.
  3. You will have three options: Public (all TikTok users can see the video), Friends (only your followers that you also follow) and Private (only you will be able to see it).
  4. Select the one you want and you’re done.

TikTok - Seguridad y privacidad

· Control who talks to you

In addition to all the actions described so far, another of the most interesting features that TikTok has is that you can decide who interacts with you or, what is the same, who can comment on your content, react to them or if you can download your videos.

All these options are concentrated in the same control panel and always offer two or three possibilities: Everyone, Friends (users who follow you and those you follow) or No one.

  1. Enter the app and go to your profile (Me), tapping on the icon in the lower right corner.
  2. Tap on the three dots in the upper right corner.
  3. Enter Privacy and security.
  4. In the Security section , you have the parameters:
    • Allow downloading of your videos (On or Off)
    • Who can send you direct messages (Friends or Nobody)
    • Who can Duet your videos or paste them (Everyone, Friends or Nobody)
    • Who can react to your videos (Everyone, Friends or Nobody)
    • Who can see the videos you like (All or Only me)
    • Who can comment on your videos (Everyone, Friends or No one)
  5. Select in each of the highlights what you want and that’s it. It will be saved in your preferences.

TikTok - Seguridad y privacidad

· Personalized advertising and data

We enter one of the trickiest issues on social networks: the control that companies have of our data. It turns out that TikTok, like many other services, always shows you advertising based on your activity inside and outside TikTok. You can disable this option, but with this you will not avoid advertising: what you will prohibit is that the social network has used your preferences to adapt the ads to what it thinks you like, which is different.

In case you want to modify it (by default it is activated), this is what you should do:

  1. Enter the application of your mobile and go to your profile (Me) – lower right corner.
  2. Once in your panel, tap on the three dots in the upper right corner.
  3. Enter Privacy and security.
  4. Search for “Personalization and data” and enter.
  5. In Custom Ads , disable the feature.
  6. Ready. The ads that appear on TikTok will not be based on your activity.

TikTok - Seguridad y privacidad

You can also download a copy of all the data that TikTok has about you . This can take up to a month from when you make the request, but when you receive it, you will have a report with information about your Profile, Your activity and Your application settings. Be careful, this request only allows you to see what the social network collects from you, not to prevent it from doing so.

To request a copy of your data , follow these steps:

  1. Enter the app and go to your profile (Me) -icon in the lower right corner.
  2. Once in the main panel, tap on the three dots in the upper right corner.
  3. Tap on Privacy and security.
  4. Search for “Personalization and data” and enter.
  5. Tap on ” Download your data “.
  6. Click on the red button “Request data”.
  7. Your request will be put in pending mode (with the order date) in the second tab that you have on the screen called “dataaccess_downloaddata_tab”.
  8. Once it is available, you will receive a notification and you can click “Download”.

TikTok - Seguridad y privacidad

You will have only four days to download it from the moment you receive the notice that the file is generated and available to download. Keep that in mind.