A TikTok privacy audit you can finish in one sitting

Privacy on TikTok is not one switch. It is a handful of separate settings that people assume are connected and are not, which is how you end up with a locked-down account still showing three years of public likes.

Here is the order I would go in.

1. The account switch

Public or private, documented here. Private means new followers need your approval and non-followers cannot see your posts.

This is the blunt instrument. If you want to disappear this afternoon, use it. If you still want the profile working for you, skip it and do the per-post work below, which is more precise and takes longer.

2. Per-post audience

Each video carries its own setting: everyone, friends, or Only you. This is the useful one, and it is the one almost nobody has ever touched on an old post.

Worth knowing: hidden is not deleted. The file stays with TikTok either way, which matters if your concern is the content itself rather than who watches it. That distinction is the whole of private or delete.

3. Likes

Your liked videos have their own visibility control, described in TikTok’s documentation on liking. People forget this list exists and it is often the most revealing thing on the profile, because you never curated it. You were just tapping hearts at one in the morning.

Check whether yours is public. It takes ten seconds and it is the highest-value ten seconds in this whole article.

4. Reposts

Every repost is a public statement attached to your name, and there is no privacy setting for them. The only control is removing the repost, which per TikTok’s Repost documentation does nothing to the original creator’s video. See remove all your TikTok reposts.

Why this is worth an hour of your life

Not because TikTok is uniquely dangerous. I am not going to sell you that, and the evidence does not support it for an adult user.

What the record does show is that platform data handling stays under active scrutiny. The US Department of Justice announced a settlement with TikTok and ByteDance over children’s privacy in August 2026, and Brazil’s ANPD fined the company R$153.7 million over failures protecting data of children and adolescents. Those are specific cases about specific allegations, not a verdict on the app in your pocket.

The practical takeaway is duller than the headlines: know which of your settings are public, and decide that on purpose instead of by default.

Doing it at scale

Steps 1, 3 and 4 are quick. Step 2 is the one that does not scale, because per-post visibility means per post, several hundred times.

FixMyTok batches that part: select by period, confirm once, and the app applies the change on your own account from your iPhone. Then go finish the audit with a backup, because a privacy pass is a good moment to have a copy of your own work.