How can you prevent users following your site?

Question

I don't want a particular site being found by search, therefore stopping users without permission on that site from following it and seeing social feeds posted into there on their Newsfeed (which happens when you follow a site). I can hide the site from being searched, but that results in users in the site being unable to search for their own content.

Can't win?!

Answer 1

Site feeds Activities are publicly accessible unless the activity refers to content that the user does not have access to. If feed functionality is required for a restricted group of users, a site feed should be used. Site feeds display posts and replies among the users of the group. Site feed posts and replies display in the Newsfeed of a user only if the user has access to the site feed. Site feeds do not display system-generated activities. By default, the site feed feature on a team site is enabled. When you assign permissions to a team site that hosts a site feed, consider the following:

• Access to the site feed is restricted to the users specified in the permissions list.
• Users can post or reply only if they have the appropriate permissions.
• Security trimming is enforced. This means that no site feed activities will appear in the search results of a user who doesn't have access to the team site.
• Site feed activities appear in a user's Newsfeed if the user has access to the team site. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219700.aspx

So, this clearly tells, if user dont have the permission to site, even follow the site, but will not get the site feed activity. SO make sure user does not have permission...You can check from Site setting> site permission and check user permissions.

Answer 2

There is a site feature called Following Content (Enable users to follow documents or sites.).

Does disabling this give you what you want?

Answer 3

Users who has minimum Read permissions will be able to see the results.

SharePoint security model uses permission inheritance. So top level permission get propagated to bottom levels.

So to tackle this you can remove permissions for those users. Or break permission inheritance and add only required users to the site.