Guide on TikTok settings and good practises
This guide covers settings you can tweak on TikTok to have greater control over your data as well as good practices to keep in mind while navigating the platform.
TikTok can be an important tool for individuals to access information and spread messages and ideas around the globe. For these reasons, it’s not possible for some people to simply stop using it. However, we continue to be very concerned about the company’s conduct.
This guide includes:
- Two-factor authentication
- Making your account private
- Preventing TikTok from suggesting your account
- Limit your content visibility
- Block user
- Reviewing third party apps with access to your data
- Minimising targeted ads on TikTok
- Limit information sharing in the browser
- Good practices
Two-factor authentication
Two-Factor authentication provides an extra security step in order to access your account. This way, besides asking for your username and password, TikTok will verify your identity by sending a unique code to your device.
This can be done by SMS (text message) or using a dedicated app which we recommend as a more secure solution. Check our guide on password managers to learn more.
On the mobile app:
Go to your profile by clicking the bottom right corner icon. Then tap the three stripe icon on the top right and choose Settings and privacy and then click Security & Permissions. Finally, tap 2-step verification.
You can now choose your preferred authentication method and follow the on-screen instructions to set it up:
Making your account private
Making your account private (as opposed to "public") lets you share your content with a select group of people that you care about. Anyone else that might want to access it needs to send you a follow request and get your approval first. Note that in any case, your name, username and profile photo will always be visible to anyone on or off TikTok.
On the mobile app:
- Go to your profile by clicking the bottom right corner icon. Then tap the three stripe icon on the top right and choose Settings & Privacy > Privacy, and enable the Private account toggle.
On your browser:
- On TikTok's website click on the three dots under your profile picture on the left and click on Settings. Then click on Privacy and you'll be able to tick the box for Private Account.
- It is important to bear in mind that anyone already following you before you make these changes will still be following you after you set your account to private. In this case, if there is someone you want to deny access to, you have to remove them from your followers list manually. See the next section on how to do that.
Preventing TikTok from suggesting your account
In addition to making your account private, you might want to prevent TikTok from suggesting your account to your contacts and Facebook friends. Without this, even with a private account, your account might appear as a suggested account for others. To disable this feature:
On the mobile app:
- Go to your profile by clicking the bottom right corner icon. Then tap the three stripe icon on the top right and choose Settings & Privacy.
- Tap Privacy and then tap Suggest your account to others
- Disable both options
Limit your content visibility
TikTok offers a Privacy checkup function that you can use to ensure that you are comfortable with the visibility settings of your videos and photos. To do a privacy checkout:
- Go to your profile by clicking the bottom right corner icon. Then tap the three stripe icon on the top right and choose Settings & Privacy.
- Tap Privacy and scroll down to tap Privacy Checkup
- Follow the instructions and select the appropriate visibility for your content
Block User
This section will take you through the few steps you need to take if you want to block an account on TikTok.
Blocking an account on TikTok will make them unable to find your profile, stories and posts. When you block a profile, they do not get a notification about your action. Blocking an account means you will stop getting notifications from that same account and it also means you cannot follow an account you have blocked. Keep in mind that if your profile is set to public, anyone that you have blocked can find you if they login through another account.
On the mobile app or on your browser (procedure is exactly the same):
- Go to the profile you wish to block.
- Click the share button in the top right corner, select Block and then confirm.
On your browser:
- Go to the profile you wish to block.
- Click the three dots button at the top, select Block and then confirm.
Reviewing third party apps with access to your data
Over years of using TikTok, you might have given several apps permission to access your data stored on the platform. It's important to have control over who you want having access to your data - this is bigger than just having access to your profile. In this section we will look into how to manage third-party apps' access to your TikTok data.
On the mobile app:
- Go to your profile by clicking the bottom right corner icon. Then tap the three stripe icon on the top right and choose Settings & Privacy.
- Click on Security & permissions and then Apps and services permissions.
- If you see any app that shouldn't be there, tap on it and click Remove access.
Minimising targeted ads on TikTok
This section shows you how you can minimise the usage of your data for advertising recommendations on TikTok. Note that the settings are different on mobile and in the browser, with more options available in the browser with regards to the topics used to target ads.
On the mobile app:
- Go to your profile by clicking the bottom right corner icon. Then tap the three stripe icon on the top right and choose Settings & Privacy.
- Scroll down and click on Ads.
- Turn off Personalized ads. You can also clear off-TikTok data which is data that advertisers shared with TikTok
On browser:
- On TikTok's website, click on the three dots under your profile picture on the left and click on Settings. Then click on Ads and you'll be able to tick the box for Private Account.
- Turn off Personalized ads. You can also clear off-TikTok data which is data that advertisers shared with TikTok
- Click Manage ads topics to remove topics TikTok uses to tailor ads
Limit information sharing in the browser
By default, TikTok allows its internal browser to autofill fields with your payment and contact information. This can be abused by malicious actors to capture sensitive information about you. To disable this behaviour:
On the mobile app:
- Go to your profile by clicking the bottom right corner icon. Then tap the three stripe icon on the top right and choose Settings & Privacy.
- Scroll down and click on Security & permissions and Browser settings
- Disable both options
Good practices
Updating your settings is important to protect your privacy, but the way you interact with TikTok can also expose a lot about you. In this section we present some simple practices to keep in mind when you are using the app.
- If your account is private, don’t accept follow requests from unknown people.
- Let people know that you don’t want videos or pictures of you posted without your consent.
- Don’t post videos of other people without their consent.
- Don’t post sensitive information in your photos, videos or captions.
- Don’t reveal your location/make sure the location is not revealed by background details.
- Don’t use hashtags that may reveal private data (or the location).
- Be wary when posting videos or photos of your kids on social media.
- If you log into your TikTok account from other devices (public / shared), make sure you log out every time.
- Take some time every now and then to review your settings and be wary when granting access to third-party apps.
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