Content

• To step
• Part 1 of 2: Using the "Search by Name" page
• Part 2 of 2: Searching in a browser
• Tips
• Warnings

In this article, we'll explain how you can view a portion of someone's Facebook account without needing an account yourself. You can find out if the user in question has an active Facebook account, but you cannot view the full profile (eg basic information, photos, timeline info) without creating a Facebook account yourself.

To step

Part 1 of 2: Using the "Search by Name" page

1. Go to the Facebook homepage on a computer. You can find this at https://www.facebook.com/. You cannot reach the "Search by Name" page from a mobile device.
2. Scroll down and click the People link. You can find this link in the blue box at the bottom of the page.
3. Click on the search bar. On the right side of the page, you can click in a search box that says "Search for people" in it.
4. In the search box, type a user's first and last name. Make sure it is spelled correctly. If you have already tried this method you can also use variations (eg "Hans" for someone called "Johannes", or "Wim" instead of "Willem").
   • You may first have to prove that you are not a spam bot, you do this by typing a code that you see appearing on your screen.
5. Click on Search. This button is on the right side of the search bar. Now Facebook is searched for profiles matching the given name.
6. View the search results. If you don't see the profile of the person you're looking for in the results, try the following method to be on the safe side.
   • If you do see the profile, you cannot click on it; but at least you now know that this person has a Facebook account.

Part 2 of 2: Searching in a browser

1. Click on the address bar of your browser. That's the white bar at the top of your browser's page, it probably already contains text. Sometimes you can find Facebook users who cannot be found via the Facebook page "Search by name" with a search on Google.
2. Type site: facebook.com "First Name Last Name" in the address bar. Replace the word "First Name" with the user's first name and the word "Last Name" with the user's last name.
   • For example, you can type site: facebook.com "Piet Jansen".
3. Press ⏎ Return (Mac) or ↵ Enter (PC). By means of this search you search for the user in question, but then within the context of the Facebook pages.
4. Click on a search result. This will open the user profile, but in most cases you can now only see the profile picture and name.
   • You can also do a search on Google Images to confirm that the profile you are looking for is getting a result.
5. View your selected search result. If your selected user has a profile that appears on search engines, you will see his / her profile picture, name and any other information that has been made public by the user.

Tips

• You can also ask a mutual friend to show you the profile page of the desired user.
• In some cases, to view a user account, you may want to create a fake profile associated with a spam email account. You can delete the Facebook profile in question when you are done.

Warnings

• If a Facebook user has indicated that his or her profile should not be visible to search engines, the methods in this article will not help.
• Most users have set their data to be visible only to their Facebook friends. In that case, you may not even see the profile picture.