In a world that seems increasingly devoid of privacy, there are still steps you can take to keep yourself, and your data, relatively safe from prying eyes. And since you never know exactly what kind of information people will be looking for, it’s best to secure yourself on every platform possible. Yes, that includes your PlayStation 5.
Thankfully, your PlayStation comes with a number of common-sense privacy features, and you can take advantage of them with little hassle. Here, we’ll show you how.
The PS5 privacy settings are a great start, but you can always do more. CyberGhost VPN can hide your IP address, help protect you from DDoS attacks, prevent ISP spying and throttling with military-grade encryption, and more.
Why Should You Change Your PlayStation 5 Privacy Settings?
Because they might not be doing what you want by default, plain and simple. Most of these settings are set, by default, to share what you’re doing with others… at least with friends. Maybe you want to maintain a bit of mystery in your gaming life.
Well, that’s what these settings are for.
How to Access Your Privacy Settings on PS5
On the main screen of your PS5, there will be a little gear icon next to your profile picture in the upper right part of the screen. Select that, and it’ll take you to the settings menu. From there, select Users and Accounts, and then select Privacy.
PS5 Privacy Settings and How to Customize Them
From there, there are two ways to set up your privacy settings. You can select View and Customize Your Privacy Settings for granular control over every setting, or you can select Adjust Privacy Settings by Choosing a Profile to have your PlayStation use preset options.
If you select the first option, you’ll be able to customize the settings below, starting with:
Your Real Name and Profile Pictures
This section is all about deciding who gets to see you, the real you, at all. Items in this section include:
- Who can see them in search results
Defines who can search for you by your real name.
Options: No One, Anyone
- Who can see them in search results
- Who can see them within games
Defines who gets to see your real name when you play multiplayer games.
Options: Close Friends (this is different from regular friends in the system), No One
- Who can see them within games
- Who can see them as a friend suggestion
This lets you decide whether or not you want your real name and picture to appear in lists of “suggested friends”… to friends of your friends. That was a mouthful. If you restrict your name and image to Close Friends only, their Close Friends will still be able to see your real name in their suggestions.
Options: On, Off
- Who can see them as a friend suggestion
- Who can see them in your close friends’ list of friends
I’m pretty sure you get the idea.
Options: Close Friends Only, Close Friends of Close Friends
- Who can see them in your close friends’ list of friends
- Who can see your friends
Yes, you can decide to keep your friends list private altogether. It’s honestly not the worst idea.
Options: No One, Friends Only, Friends of Friends, Anyone
- Who can see your friends
- Edit Your Profile
This just literally does what it says. Here, you can edit your profile picture, online ID, your first and last name, avatar, cover image, user bio, and even list the languages you use.
- Edit Your Profile
- Who can see your online status and what you’re currently playing
Want to be unavailable for a while? Playing a game you find slightly embarrassing? No one has to know.
Options: Friends Only, Friends of Friends, Anyone
- Who can see your online status and what you’re currently playing
- Who can see your gaming history
This setting shows or hides games that you’ve played in the past.
Options: No One, Friends Only, Friends of Friends, Anyone
- Who can see your gaming history
- Hide your games from other players
This setting straight up lets you hide entire games in your library. No one, not your friends or their friends, will know you have it.
- Hide your games from other players
- Who can ask to be your friend
Options: Anyone, Friends of Friends, No One
- Who can ask to be your friend
- Who can interact with you through parties, games, and messages
This lets you limit your interactions to friends, or just go solo if you want.
Options: Anyone, Friends Only, No One
- Who can interact with you through parties, games, and messages
- Players you’re blocking
This setting lets you see a list of the player’s you’ve blocked, and manage that list as you will.
- Players you’re blocking
- Social and Open
- Team Playern
- Friend Focusedn
- Solo and Focusedn
- Data you provide
Options: Full (provides Sony with behavioral data), Limited (keeps shared data to the essentials)
- Data you provide
- Personalization
This allows you to toggle what sort of personalized content gets served to you.
Toggleable options: Personalized Purchase Recommendations, Personalized Advertising, Personalized Media, Standard Personalization
- Personalization
- Voice data collection
This is typically used for things like chat transcription, and voice input.
Options: Allow, Don’t Allow
- Voice data collection
Your Information
This section covers just two things:
Your Activity
This is all about showing or hiding what you do with your PlayStation. Here’s what this section covers:
Communication and Multiplayer
Lastly, this section is all about deciding who gets to be your friend, and who gets to talk to you. Given just how many people game these days, these settings are important:
Profiles
Don’t feel like going through all of that? You can just choose a privacy profile, as mentioned above, to manage your settings for you. These are a good way to change a lot of settings on the fly, if you want to.
Privacy profile options include:
Control How Your Data Is Collected and Used
This section is back under the main Privacy menu, and it does exactly what the title says. Here’s what you can control:
How Private Is the PS5, Really?
All in all, the PS5’s privacy options are pretty solid. You generally don’t have to worry that PS is going to leak too much sensitive information to other players if you have your settings set up correctly. Buuut… that’s when everything is going right.
PlayStation and Sony, its parent company, have been hacked before. In 2023, Sony was hacked twice in four months. Fortunately, neither incident was as bad as in 2011, when the PSN went down for a month, and 77 million accounts were compromised.
It’s mostly smooth sailing, but you’ll want to take extra precautions as you game online.
Why You Should Use a VPN for PlayStation 5
The benefits are many. A good gaming VPN can help you bypass ISP throttling, protect you from DDoS attacks, hide your IP address, and even reduce lag in some cases. It can help you get more stable, predictable connections to game servers, too.
Why CyberGhost Is the Best VPN for PlayStation
CyberGhost VPN uses a global network of ultra-fast servers (including 10-Gbps servers in busy locations), military-grade encryption, and the latest and greatest in VPN technology to provide the best VPN for PS5. In fact, CyberGhost specifically supports consoles, and even offers a selection of gaming-optimized servers to further improve the time you spend fragging your friends.
FAQ
You can choose the Social and Open profile on your PlayStation to just set all privacy options to their most permissive state. This will allow anyone and everyone to see what you’re doing and playing, and let anyone talk to you. No muss, no fuss.
Go to Settings > Account Management > Privacy Settings. Everything you need will be in that section, including the ability to hide your games or your online status, manage your friends and who can play with you, and more.
For account security settings, you should go to Settings > Account Management > Account Information. Here you can change passwords, set up passkeys, add two-factor authentication, change your security question, and plenty more.
If you’ve given your correct birthday to PSN, you’ll automatically see a notification when your account is eligible to upgrade to an adult account when you sign into PSN. Just follow the on screen instructions to complete the upgrade. This can be done on the console, or the PSN website. You’ll also find the option under Account Management.
To set default permissions for new users on your PlayStation 5, go to Settings > Family and Parental Controls > PS5 Console Restrictions. To manage family and child accounts, go to Settings > Family and Parental Controls > Family Management.
Aside from generally just keeping your software up to date, you can use a gaming VPN to encrypt your traffic between your console and the game server. This keeps people on local networks from prying, and even keeps your ISP from seeing what you’re doing. It’ll also hide your IP address, so no one can directly target your home network.
A VPN provides protection by hiding your IP, and encrypting traffic between your home network and the VPN server of your choice. This also prevents your ISP from throttling game speed. In addition, a VPN can actually lower your ping in some situations by bypassing problems that would normally slow down your signal.
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