Fansly's privacy settings are mostly on the Privacy & Safety page under Settings, where you can geoblock countries, states, regions or cities, decide who can see your timeline, hide tip amounts and blur incoming media. The follow button lives on the Plans/Promos page of the Creator Dashboard and DM permissions sit under Messages. None of these controls hides your public profile details from everyone, and none can take back media a fan has already bought.
This guide is a setup audit for those controls: where each one lives, a sensible starting point depending on your situation, and the gap each one leaves open. Wider anonymity strategy, from separating devices to keeping your face out of content, is covered in our anonymous creator privacy and OPSEC guide and our creator safety and privacy guide. This page stays on the switches inside Fansly.
Where Fansly keeps its privacy controls
Fansly's Privacy Settings article gives the route to the main page: click your profile picture, choose Settings, then Privacy & Safety. Other controls are scattered across the dashboard, so it helps to know the map before you start.
- Settings > Privacy & Safety: timeline permissions, blocked locations, hiding tip amounts, sensitive content filters and the internal discovery switch for hidden timelines.
- Creator Dashboard > Plans/Promos: the Follow Button Enabled toggle and the Require Payment Method to follow option.
- Creator Dashboard > Messages: DM permissions for who can start a conversation with you.
- Your profile, via the pencil icon beside your walls: public and private walls and which one is your Main Wall.
- Lists in the site menu: blocked and muted accounts, VIPs, the DM Allow List and any custom lists.
- Settings > Connections: the Twitch and X accounts linked to your profile.
Privacy settings audit table
The location and behaviour of each setting come from the Fansly help article linked in that row. The suggested defaults are starting points to adjust, not rules, and the final column records what the setting leaves unprotected.
| Setting | Where to find it | Suggested default by situation | What it does not protect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blocked locations | Privacy & Safety > Add Blocked Locations (privacy article) | Your home city at minimum; add the cities of family or a workplace if being recognised there worries you | Copies of your media already saved or shared elsewhere |
| Timeline permissions | Privacy & Safety > Timeline Permissions > New Permission | Followers-only for a quieter page; open to everyone if discovery matters more | Your display name, bio, avatar, header and wall album titles |
| Internal discovery when the timeline is hidden | Privacy & Safety, beside the timeline options | On if your timeline is restricted but you still want posts eligible for the FYP | Posts sent to the FYP are shown to people who do not follow you |
| Follow button | Plans/Promos > Follow Button Enabled (follow article) | On for most pages; off only for a deliberately subscriber-only page | It governs who can follow, not who can view your public profile |
| Require payment method to follow | Plans/Promos | On if throwaway accounts have been following and messaging you | It checks for a saved payment method, not for who the person is |
| DM permissions | Creator Dashboard > Messages (DM permissions article) | Subscribers, plus a DM Allow List for people you trust who do not qualify | What a permitted fan does with media you send them |
| Blur media in DMs | Privacy & Safety > Sensitive Content Filters | On if you want to choose when incoming media is shown; the help articles disagree on whether it starts switched on, so check yours | It blurs what you receive but does not stop the sender; blocking does that |
| Hide post tip amount | Privacy & Safety (tip amounts article) | On if you prefer not to display what posts earn | It hides the tip total under each post and nothing else |
| Read receipts | The Privacy page for the whole account, or the three-dot menu in a single DM thread | Off if you want to reply on your own schedule without signalling you have read | They are on by default for every user until you change them |
| Private walls | Profile, pencil icon next to your wall list (walls article) | Use for drafts and archives; the Main Wall itself cannot be private | Posts promoted to the FYP still appear there whatever wall they sit on |
| Block | Three-dot menu on a profile, post or DM (blocking article) | For anyone you want completely cut off; it also covers their linked secondary accounts | Media they already bought, which fans keep indefinitely |
| Mute | The same three-dot menu | For accounts you want out of your feed and notifications without a confrontation | A muted user can still view your profile and interact with you |
| Connections | Settings > Connections | Connect only Twitch or X accounts that are already public creator accounts | People who follow you there and connect their own accounts may be shown your Fansly profile |
Geoblocking: how it behaves and how to set it
The Privacy Settings article walks through the steps: scroll to Add Blocked Locations, click the Enter Blocked Location box, start typing and pick the place from the dropdown, then clear the text and repeat for each extra location. To lift a block, find it under Your Blocked Locations and click the trash icon. Blocks can cover entire countries, states, cities or regions.
Fansly describes the result in two slightly different ways. The privacy article says blocked users will not see your profile in search results or on the FYP and will get an error message if they try to open it directly, while the Creator Security FAQ says they see a blank page as if the profile does not exist. Either way your page does not load for them, but if you test a block with a friend, do not be surprised by whichever version appears.
The help centre's own advice is to be as specific as possible: blocking an entire country or province can significantly reduce your visibility, so target a city rather than a whole state where that is enough. The Getting Started guide also notes that profile details and wall album titles stay visible unless a user is blocked or geoblocked, which makes geoblocking the way to keep them from a whole area at once. Remember what geoblocking relies on: the location Fansly detects for each visitor. It cannot follow a screenshot or a saved file, and it does nothing about people who already know your stage name and reach your content through someone else.
Timeline, follow and discovery settings work as a set
Timeline permissions decide who can view your posts on your profile, separately from the media permissions that decide who can open each item. Fansly's hide my timeline article shows the option under Privacy & Safety, and the Security FAQ suggests a followers-only timeline so only logged-in followers can see your content.
Those settings interact. The managing followers article warns that if you disable the follow button but leave Following as a timeline requirement, new users cannot view your timeline and even subscribers may be locked out of posts. If you hide the timeline but still want reach, the privacy article's Internal discovery when the timeline is hidden option keeps posts eligible for the FYP.
Walls add another layer. The walls article says private walls are visible only to you, every profile needs a public Main Wall, and switching a private wall to public makes all of its posts visible at once to anyone who can reach your profile, so check media permissions before flipping one. After any change, Fansly's account information article suggests View Media As with Free User and Test Timeline Permissions selected, which shows exactly what the public sees.
Messages, lists, blocking and muting
DM permissions let you accept messages from everyone, from followers only or from custom lists, and you can combine conditions so that, for example, subscribers and selected followers can write in. Fansly's lists article describes a DM Allow List for specific users who should reach you even when they do not meet your general requirements, and notes that mass messages are the only feature where you can exclude people by list membership.
The messaging article fills in the rest: read receipts are on by default and can be turned off for the whole account or for one person, media in DMs can be blurred until you choose to view it, and a fan who cannot message you may be running into your DM permissions or a region you have blocked. It also says fans cannot tell whether a message was sent manually, scheduled or automated.
Blocking cuts someone off from your profile and from contacting you, extends to linked secondary accounts, and is never announced to the other person; muting simply removes them from your feed and notifications. Before you block a paying subscriber, read the Security FAQ: subscriptions are not refunded automatically, but if the fan requests a refund and it is approved, the amount comes out of your earnings, and fans keep purchased media indefinitely unless support agrees to an exceptional removal.
Starting set-ups for three creator situations
- Discovery comes first and you are comfortable being found: a public timeline with locked media, a narrow block on your home city, the follow button on, and DMs open to subscribers plus a VIP list.
- A local audience is the main worry: city-level blocks on your home area and nearby cities you frequent, a followers-only timeline with internal discovery switched on, payment method required to follow, and read receipts off.
- The page is for subscribers only: the follow button off and the Following requirement removed from timeline permissions, the timeline limited to subscribers, DMs limited to subscribers and an allow list, and private walls for archives.
Whichever set-up you choose, recheck it whenever you restructure tiers or walls, because a single changed requirement can hide your page from the people you want to reach.
What these settings cannot do
Australia's privacy regulator makes the general point well. The OAIC's social media guidance says that even with privacy settings you may not have complete control over who sees or uses what you share, that others can republish it to a wider audience, and that information shared online may be permanently recorded. On Fansly that means your public profile fields, media fans have bought, and anything captured off the screen.
Settings also cannot protect an account someone else controls. Pair this audit with our Fansly account security checklist for two-factor authentication and management sessions, and with the Fansly bio and profile checklist so the fields that stay public give nothing away.
Limitations of this audit
Setting names and locations come from Fansly help articles as they read on 1 October 2026, and some of those articles use older labels, such as Add New where others say New Permission, so expect small differences on screen. The suggested defaults are judgement calls for common situations rather than official recommendations, and the right choice depends on your own risks.
No platform setting can make you anonymous or safe on its own. If you are dealing with stalking, threats or someone sharing your images without consent, contact local police; in Australia the eSafety Commissioner can help remove intimate images shared without consent, as its image-based abuse page explains. Get specialist legal advice where the stakes are high.
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