By default, all information you save in PluralKit will be **public**.
Using the lookup commands, anyone can look at your system and the information within.
This is often useful! The original intention of the bot was to function as a "profile", similar to someone's public Twitter or Tumblr account.
However, this may not be what everyone wants.
As such, PluralKit offers options to make information **private** to others.
Every privacy option can be set to either **public** or **private**. Public data can be seen by anyone (including through [the API](../api.md)), wheras private data can only be seen by you.
::: warning
The privacy options only apply to lookups **by** others.
When you look up information about your own system, **even in public servers**, all information will be shown.
So, be careful not to pull up private information in public :slightly_smiling_face:
- **Metadata** privacy *(affects message count, last message, last switch, etc)*
- **Visibility** *(affects whether this member is shown in your system's [member lists](./listing.md))*
::: warning
There are a couple gotchas with these settings:
- Since PluralKit still needs to refer to a member, **name privacy only applies when a display name is set**. Any time PluralKit needs to show the member name, it'll *instead* show the display name.
- All members can always be looked up by [5-character ID](./ids.md), **even when visibility is private**. However, these IDs are impractical to guess, so as long as you don't share it, it'll still be private.
:::
You can view your member's current privacy settings using the following command:
<Cmd>member <Arg>member</Arg> privacy</Cmd>
You can **change** your system's privacy settings using the following command:
