Policy details

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Policy Rationale

Privacy and the protection of personal information are fundamentally important values for Facebook. We work hard to safeguard your personal identity and information and we do not allow people to post certain types of personal or confidential information about yourself or of others.

We remove content that shares, offers or solicits personally identifiable information or other private information that could lead to physical or financial harm, including financial, residential, and medical information, as well as private information obtained from illegal sources. We also recognize that private information may become publicly available through news coverage, court filings, press releases, or other sources. When that happens, we may allow the information to be posted.

We also provide people ways to report imagery that they believe to be in violation of their privacy rights.

Do not post:

Content that shares or solicits any of the following private information, either on Facebook or through external links:

Personally identifiable information about yourself or others

  • Personal identification numbers and identity documents: identifying individuals by name and government-issued numbers, including:
    • National identification numbers (for example Social Security Numbers (SSN), Passport Numbers, National Insurance/Health Service Numbers, Personal Public Service Numbers (PPS), Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN)).
    • Government IDs of law enforcement, military, or security personnel.
    • Records or official documentation of civil registry information (for example, marriage, birth, death, name change or gender recognition documents, except student IDs)
    • Immigration and work status documents (for example, green cards, work permits, visas, or immigration papers)
    • Driver’s licenses or license plates, except when license plates are shared to facilitate finding missing vehicles, people or animals
    • Credit Privacy Numbers (CPNs)
  • Digital identity: Passwords, pins or codes (such as passwords of email addresses, social media accounts and accounts of streaming services) that authenticate access to an online identity

Personal Contact Information

  • Personal contact information of others, including personal phone numbers and personal email addresses (including work email addresses), except when made public by the individual or when shared or solicited to promote charitable causes, facilitate finding missing people, animals, or owners of missing objects, or contact a business or service providers (unless it is established that the personal contact information is shared without the consent of the individual).

Financial information.

  • Personal financial information about yourself or others, including:
    • Non-public financial records or statements.
    • Bank account numbers with security or pin codes.
    • Digital payment method information with log in details, security or pin codes.
    • Credit or debit card information with validity dates or security pins or codes.
  • Financial information about businesses or organizations, except when originally shared by the organization itself (including subsequent shares with the original context intact) or shared through public reporting requirements (for example as required by stock exchanges or regulatory agencies), including:
    • Non-public financial records or statements
    • Bank account numbers accompanied by security or pin codes.
    • Digital payment method information accompanied by log in details, security or pin codes.

Residential information

  • Private residential addresses of others (except when the residence is an official residence or embassy provided to a high-ranking public official):
  • Full private residential addresses of others, including building name, GPS pins or pins on a map identifying the address (even if the pins are in an off-platform link), except when shared to promote charitable causes, facilitate finding missing people, animals, or owners of missing objects, or contact a business or service providers
  • Partial private residential addresses of others:
    • Partial private residential addresses of others when shared in the context of organizing protests or surveillance of the resident and the location of the residence is identified by any one of the following:
    • Street
    • City or neighborhood (only for cities with fewer than 50,000 residents)
    • Postal code
    • GPS pins or pins on a map identifying any of these (even if the pins are in an off-platform link)
  • Imagery that displays the external view of private residences if all of the following conditions apply:
  • The residence is a single-family home, or the resident's unit number/building name is identified in the image/caption.
  • The location of the residence is identified by any one of the following:
    • Street
    • City or neighborhood (only for cities with fewer than 50,000 residents)
    • Postal code
    • GPS pins or pins on a map identifying any of these (even if the pins are in an off-platform link)
  • The content identifies the resident(s).
  • Either that resident objects to the exposure of their private residence, or there is context of organizing protests against the resident.
  • The imagery of the residence is not being shared because the residence is the focus of a news story except when shared in the context of organizing protests against the resident
  • Location of safe houses: content that exposes information about safe houses by sharing any of the below, except when the safe house is actively promoting information about their facility
  • Actual address (Note: "Post Box only" is allowed.)
  • Images of the safe house.
  • Identifiable city/neighborhood of the safe house.
  • Information exposing the identity of the safe house residents.

Medical information

  • Content sharing medical, psychological, biometric, or genetic hereditary information of others when it is clear that the information comes from medical records or other official documents, including when displayed visually or shared through audio or video.

Information obtained from hacked sources

  • Except in limited cases of newsworthiness, content claimed or confirmed to come from a hacked source, regardless of whether the affected person is a public figure or a private individual.

The following content also may be removed:

  • A reported photo or video of people where the person depicted in the image is:
    • A minor under 13 years old, and the content was reported by the minor or a parent or legal guardian.
    • A minor between 13 and 18 years old, and the content was reported by the minor.
    • An adult, where the content was reported by the adult from outside the United States and applicable law may provide rights to removal.
    • Any person who is incapacitated and unable to report the content on their own.

For the following Community Standards, we require additional information and/or context to enforce:

Do not post:

  • Depictions of an individual in a medical or health facility or a private individual or minor entering or exiting a medical or health facility if reported by the person pictured or an authorized representative, or the medical or health facility.
  • Source material that purports to reveal nonpublic information relevant to an election shared as part of a foreign government influence operation.
    • We remove reporting on such a leak by state-controlled media entities from the country behind the leak.

User experiences

See some examples of what enforcement looks like for people on Facebook, such as: what it looks like to report something you don’t think should be on Facebook, to be told you’ve violated our Community Standards and to see a warning screen over certain content.

Note: We’re always improving, so what you see here may be slightly outdated compared to what we currently use.

Reporting
1
Universal entry point

We have an option to report, whether it’s on a post, a comment, a story, a message or something else.

2
Get started

We help people report things that they don’t think should be on our platform.

3
Select a problem

We ask people to tell us more about what’s wrong. This helps us send the report to the right place.

4
Report submitted

After these steps, we submit the report. We also lay out what people should expect next.

Post-report communication
1
Update via notifications

After we’ve reviewed the report, we’ll send the reporting user a notification.

2
More detail in the Support Inbox

We’ll share more details about our review decision in the Support Inbox. We’ll notify people that this information is there and send them a link to it.

3
Appeal option

If people think we got the decision wrong, they can request another review.

4
Post-appeal communication

We’ll send a final response after we’ve re-reviewed the content, again to the Support Inbox.

Takedown experience
1
Immediate notification

When someone posts something that doesn't follow our rules, we’ll tell them.

2
Additional context

We’ll also address common misperceptions and explain why we made the decision to enforce.

3
Policy Explanation

We’ll give people easy-to-understand explanations about the relevant rule.

4
Option for review

If people disagree with the decision, they can ask for another review and provide more information.

5
Final decision

We set expectations about what will happen after the review has been submitted.

Warning screens
1
Warning screens in context

We cover certain content in News Feed and other surfaces, so people can choose whether to see it.

2
More information

In this example, we give more context on why we’ve covered the photo with more context from independent fact-checkers

Enforcement

We have the same policies around the world, for everyone on Facebook.

Review teams

Our global team of over 15,000 reviewers work every day to keep people on Facebook safe.

Stakeholder engagement

Outside experts, academics, NGOs and policymakers help inform the Facebook Community Standards.

Get help with privacy violations

Learn what you can do if you see something on Facebook that goes against our Community Standards.