Can I stop my friends tagging me on Facebook?

This article has been updated. The latest article can be seen here.

Firstly, no, you can’t. It’s a feature that many Facebook users ask for and many believe they have a right to, but you simply cannot stop someone on your friends list tagging you in a photo or a post.

Obviously this fact has some drawbacks. May be you don’t want to be tagged in an embarrassing photo. Or perhaps you don’t want to be tagged in a post about an excursion you’re not supposed to be on.

With that said, you can limit the visibility of these tags before you decide what to do with them.

It’s the “Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline?” option that can be found in your main Settings section under “Timeline and Tagging”.

Enable this option to review tags.

This option means that when someone tags you in a post or photo (yes, they can still tag you) the post/photo does NOT appear on your timeline. Instead you get notified of the tag and you can view it in your Activity Log. From there you can choose to allow it on your timeline, or to keep it hidden.

At this point you can also choose to remove the Tag if you don’t want the post associated with you.

It’s a nifty feature and with our lives becoming ever so intertwined with the goings-on on Facebook, it’s an option we strongly recommend enabling. But sadly it’s not the same as an option that prevents people from tagging you altogether.

That is because that despite the Tag not appearing on your timeline until you expressly allow it on there, the Tag may still be visible elsewhere on Facebook. For example the person who created/uploaded the post/photo will still have it on their timeline, and the audience of that post/photo will depend on that person’s privacy settings.

It also may still appear on the newsfeeds of other Facebook users, including users who are friends with the person who created/uploaded the post/photo.

Would you like to see a way Facebook users can stop people tagging them in posts and photos altogether? Let us know below.