Privacy Settings Checklist

15: Android, Discord, Facebook, Google, Instagram, iPhone, LinkedIn, Reddit, Snapchat, Telegram, TikTok, WhatsApp, Windows, X (Twitter), YouTube. Pick one at the top of the tool; the page link updates (for example ?v=android) so you can bookmark or share that exact view.

Settings > Security and privacy > More privacy settings > Ads, then choose Delete advertising ID. Deleting is stronger than resetting: apps that request the ID afterwards receive a string of zeros, whereas a reset simply issues a new identifier and profiling starts again from scratch. Menu wording varies by manufacturer — Samsung and Xiaomi place it slightly differently.

Two settings, and both are needed. Turn off “Allow direct messages from server members” in User Settings > Privacy & Safety, which covers servers you join from then on, and then open each server you already belong to and switch off its own Privacy Settings > Direct Messages override. The global toggle does not retroactively change servers you already joined.

Settings and privacy > Settings > Privacy > Your activity > Limit who can see past posts. It changes every post previously shared as Public or Friends of friends to Friends only in one action. It cannot be undone in bulk — reversing it means editing posts one at a time — and it does not change photo album audiences or posts you were tagged in.

Go to myaccount.google.com > Data and privacy > Web & App Activity and turn it off, or set auto-delete to 3 months, the shortest option Google offers. Pausing only stops new records — clearing what is already stored needs a separate Delete activity by > All time on myactivity.google.com.

Open Settings and privacy > Account privacy and turn on Private account. Only approved followers then see your posts, reels, stories and following list, but existing followers keep access and anything public before the switch may already be cached or screenshotted.

Significant Locations is a timestamped log of the places you visit regularly, kept so the phone can offer location-based suggestions. It is encrypted and stored on the device rather than in the cloud, but anyone who knows your passcode can read your movement history from it in under a minute. Find it at Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations, where you can turn it off and clear the existing history.

Settings & Privacy > Visibility > 'Share profile updates with your network', set to No. Do this before you edit anything: notifications already sent cannot be recalled, so the order matters more than the setting itself.

No. Deleting the account detaches your username from your posts — they stay visible attributed to [deleted] — and it does not touch the third-party archives and mirror sites that copied them earlier. To remove your own text you have to edit each comment and then delete it, and even that only affects copies made after the edit.

Open Snap Map, tap the settings icon in the top corner and switch on Ghost Mode. Choose 'until turned off' rather than the 3-hour or 24-hour options, because those expire silently and put you back on the map without telling you.

Only Secret Chats are. Ordinary cloud chats, group chats and channels are encrypted in transit and at rest, but Telegram holds the keys and can technically read them, which is why they can be restored on a new device. A Secret Chat has to be started manually from a contact's profile, works only one-to-one, and lives on the two devices rather than in the cloud.