There are many reasons why you would want to view a private Facebook profile. Checking up on your ex? How about wanting to check out who he/she left you for? Maybe you just want to check out someone you think is hot. Or maybe someone hates you and would never accept your friend request but you are still dying to see their profile.
Well, whatever the reason, we’ve ALL wanted to view a private Facebook profile at one point. It’s ok. It doesn’t make you a closet stalker. It just means you’re a normal human being and you’ve come to exactly the right place to find out how to do so.
Now sites out there like fbviewer.com don’t always work. Yes, Facebook might have some technical loopholes, but those loopholes don’t last long and it’s a cat and mouse game with finding new loopholes to exploit (but by all means go ahead and try those websites. They may only work 1 in 10 times but it may save you a TON of time and not have to read this entire article).
However, there are always surefire ways to view someone’s private Facebook profile. You’ll just have to forgo the shortcuts of using those previously mentioned sites when they’re not working and do some hard work of your own.
Now lets get down to business.
Scenario #1: It’s a private profile that happens to have mutual friends or their entire friend list displayed.
If you’re lucky and their profile looks like the one below and you can see who they’re friends with, this works almost 100% of the time (we’ve blocked out identifying information for privacy – how ironic huh?).
What we’re going to do is pretend to be one of her friends who had their account hacked and that they’re trying to re-add everyone on their list.
The first step is to choose one of their friends and click on the friend’s profile. You don’t want to click on one of her friends that pop up on their main page because that may be a friend she chooses to always display and they’ll know something is up.
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After clicking See All, randomly scroll down the friend’s list and pick someone like we did in the following picture.
Next, we’re going to view Elizabeth’s profile and save her profile picture to use as our fake account’s profile picture.
The next step is the most time consuming part but you can do it in 5 minutes. Create a new Facebook account with a spare email that you have. The important part is we’re going to make an account with the friend’s name and use the profile picture that you just saved. Go to the privacy options of the profile and turn everything thing private except the profile picture so when someone else sees the account it looks like this:
Now here’s where the magic happens! As you’re logged into your fake profile, go back and find the private Facebook profile you want to view. Add the person as a friend but you must include a personal message with the friend request.
Here’s what you need to write:
After you write all that, go ahead and send that friend request!
Here’s what’s going to go in that person’s head:
“Oooh new friend request! Let’s see… who is it? Oh! It’s Liz. Aren’t I already friends with her? Yup, I do remember that profile picture. Did she defriend me and I didn’t notice? Oh wait, she sent me a message with the request… Poor girl! Her account got hacked. That’s terrible. I’ll just re-add her. Hope that doesn’t happen to me!”
And abracadabra! You can now view her once private Facebook profile. You’re smart. Pat yourself on the back.
Scenario #2: Friend list cannot be seen but I can view other minor stuff like interests.
So you ran into a profile that looks like this where the above strategy won’t work because you can’t see their friends. What do you do?
First of all, if you really do know this person, you’ll know who they’re friends with in real life and they’ll most likely be friends with them on Facebook too. If that’s the case, you can use the previously discussed strategy by making a profile of the person you know they’re friends with. Problem solved.
However, if you’re just extra creepy (you know you are!) and don’t even know who any of their friends are, you can still view their private Facebook profiles. You just need to think outside of the box!
The good news is we can see all their interests, pages they like, where they’re from and where they go to school.  This info is what we’re going to harness to be sneaky. Let us go through a few examples of what you can do:
  1. Look at their profile picture – If they have a professional looking photo like the guy above has, you know they like to model; and what do people who like to model like to do? They like to get professional pictures taken of them so they think they look hotter than they actually are in real life. If this is the case, what you can do is make a fake profile for a photographer. When you’ve set the profile up and are ready to send them a friend request, add a message to them like: “Hi douche bag/skank [ok, don't call them any names, just use their real name lol], I’m a photographer and have a new promo I’m shooting. I was referred to you and judging by your profile picture, you have the exact look I’m searching for. The promo will be shot next week and you will be compensated for your time.”
  2. If you can see where they went to school, you can send a message that says, “Hey! We were in the same class last semester. Remember me?” Of course, if you are targeting a guy, making a profile of a hot girl and vice versa will increase your odds of viewing their private Facebook profile. They key is to remember to add this message to your friend request.
  3. Are they in school and you know what they major in? How about making a profile of headhunter (a person that looks for people to work at companies) and sending a message that sounds like this: “Hi ______, I work for the HR department at so and so company and one of your professors mentioned that you were a very promising student. I hope that you don’t mind that they referred you to me. We’re interested in interviewing you for a possible internship that starts soon and will most likely help you in your career.
These few examples are provided to spark your mind to think outside the box. Just look at what you can see on their profile to come up with ideas. If you’re clever enough, you’ll eventually be able to view their private Facebook profile. Get to thinking!
Scenario #3: You can’t see anything on their profile.
I don’t see too many of these profiles where nothing is visible. If you do come across one, this person is probably paranoid already and it’s almost not worth the time to make a dummy profile and even try to send the request. Once again, you can always try a site like fbviewer to see if it’ll work.
Disclaimer
Trying to view someone’s private Facebook profile may often violate Facebook’s terms of service. I’m not encouraging anyone to do this, just showing you the possibilities of what can happen if you put a little thought and effort on how to view private Facebook profiles. Most importantly, we all learned something here didn’t we? MAKE EVERYTHING PRIVATE so this can’t happen to you. There are some creepy people out there. You know who you are! ;-)