Your Private Phone Number may be Spreading on Facebook – How to Prevent?

Facebook has never been a secure place. With lots of news related to the privacy issues, Facebook is amongst the most insecure social networking sites. First of all you might be aware of the Phonebook feature of Facebook. It lists the phone numbers of your friends. You can check out Phonebook here.

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Many of you people are using Facebook app for iPhone, but hardly anyone paid heed to the notice that it gives -

If you enable this feature, all contacts from your device(name, email address, phone number) will be sent to Facebook and be subject to Facebook’s Privacy Policy and your friends’ profile photos and other info from Facebook will be added to your iPhone address book. Please make sure your friends are comfortable with any use you make of their information.

People just click on “I Agree” and proceed. First line of this notice says on its own what I mean to explain through this post – “all contacts from your device(name, email address, phone number) will be sent to Facebook”. This means if you use this application, then all the contacts from your phone will be transferred to the Facebook. This is even valid for those people who are not on Facebook and in your phone’s address book. So, if Mr. X is not on Facebook but his number is on you iPhone, and if you use the app, then his number will get transferred to Facebook and through the Phonebook feature will be visible to others who don’t even know Mr. X. Similarly, if 10 of Mr. X’s friends are using Facebook’s iPhone app and they have X’s phone number in their phones, then all of the friends of those 10 friends of Mr. X will be able to see X’s number, even of they don’t know him. Now, you can think on your own that how privacy is lost.

Jut check it once on your own, by opening the Phonebook in Facebook and look if you know all the phone numbers mentioned over there?

How to prevent this?

Now, even you can think of it. Avoid using the app for the time being until app developers release a good version of it and spread this info as much as possible to your friends, because after all its going to help you.

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Article by Harsh

Harsh is an avid Blogger who blogs at Harsh Tech Talk. He writes about Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, technology and tips and tricks. By profession he is a software engineer working at Oracle, Bangalore. He is a big music freak.

  • livelybrowsers

    Thanks for good stuff

    • Harsh

      You’re welcome. :)

  • badmash

    I just signed up to your blogs rss feed. Will you post more on this subject?

    • Harsh

      Thanks. Ya sure, I am gonna post again on Facebook privacy issues.

  • http://www.wppluginsblog.net/ WP Plugins Blog

    Privacy is always a serious issue on facebook, Hope they will think over it.

  • http://crunchynow.com Crunchynow

    Thanks….

    privacy is always a concern for me…….
    Crunchynow recently posted..Get Benefit for Blog SEO with DoFollow Comments WordPress Plugin

  • http://bligbook.com Bligbook

    maybe there is way to get out of, maybe we can contact facebook privacy concern for that matter….
    Bligbook recently posted..5 websites for Free E-Books

  • http://www.trixya.net Jaybansal

    hmmm.. that is really something usefull harsh

  • http://www.techcrates.com Salman @ Tech Crates

    Very useful info Harsh … Thank god I am not using an iphone…:-)

  • http://www.techhim.com himanshu

    eyeopener. next time i’ll don’t give a miss to the fine print

  • R Whiting

    there is a solution here. I use a service where my number is ‘masked’ with another number. I get this from yourprivatephonenumber.com. I can also block callers on this, so anybody hassling me can receive an call blocked tone!