How to See a Facebook Profile Without an Account

To follow someone on Facebook without friending them, use the "Follow" button on that person’s Timeline or profile page; just click on this and you’ll be following that person without friending them. However, you’ll only find one of these if the person’s privacy settings allow this and it won’t be there if the person has set these to disallow non-friend follows (this setting is under "Who Can Follow Me" and needs to be set to "Everyone" for follows to work without friending).

This answer assumes you’re referring to Facebook Messenger. To read the message without alerting the sender, you’ll need to disconnect from the internet by going into Airplane Mode on your phone. Read it, then close Messenger and return to the connected mode. On a computer, if you’re using Chrome, you can use an extension called Unseen, which you’ll need to download first; for Firefox, use the Add-on, Message Seen Disable. For both browser extensions, follow the instructions they provide.

You can search Facebook without an account but some of your search will have limited returns. First, you can use Facebook’s own Facebook Directory or Facebook People Search facilities to search for information within Facebook. Outside of these facilities, you can use social search engines such as Pipl and Social Searcher. Then, there is the usual standby of using Google Search to search a website by using the standard search string of site:sitename.com query. As well, the steps above explain how to look at a Facebook profile without signing up, but realize you won’t be able to see as much as someone signed in.