How Do I Remove My Phone Number From Facebook

Earlier today, we reported on how a security researcher managed to gather countless phone numbers and their matching Facebook names with hardly any effort prior to the company might stop him. How Do I Remove My Phone Number From Facebook All he had to do was write an automatic script to exploit some standard Facebook privacy settings.

How Do I Remove My Phone Number From Facebook

 

For its part, Facebook provided us this description of what the script was exploiting:

The capability to look for a person by telephone number is deliberate behavior and not a bug in Facebook By default, your privacy settings allow everybody to discover you with search and good friend finder using the contact information you have provided, such as your email address and phone number. You can customize these settings at any time from the Privacy Settings page.

So, how do you safeguard yourself and how can you eliminate your number from Facebook? There are three options you have to understand about.

Limitation Who Can See Your Contact Number on Facebook.
Go to Facebook.com, login if you haven't already, and click your name in the top-left corner. Click the "Update Details" button on the ideal side. Under Contact Information, click the "Edit" button. Beside your contact number, there will be a drop-down menu. Ensure this option is not set to "Public" and that it at least says "Friends" and even "Just Me."

 

This will make sure that if somebody visits your profile, they can not see your contact number unless they are your pal. This implies that even if your profile is public (it probably shouldn't be), your telephone number is not noticeable to the general public. Sadly, that's inadequate; see the next option.

Limitation Who Can Browse Your Phone Number on Facebook.
This is the part that the scientist exploited to basically develop his Facebook phonebook. Even if your telephone number is set to personal, somebody can still find you if they have it.

As such, if somebody composes a script that selects random phone numbers and browsed for them on Facebook, as the security researcher did, they can link contact number to Facebook profiles, which consist of people's names and other info.

Here's the setting that started it all:.

 

Above you can see how the default options look like. To customize them, click on the drop-down menu in the top-right corner on Facebook and choose "Privacy Settings." Next, scroll down to "How You Link" and click on the blue "Edit Settings" link on the right-hand side.

Modification the "Who can look you up utilizing the e-mail address or contact number you offered?" to Friends, and anything else you think should be altered. This will stop someone from having the ability to look you up on Facebook if they have your contact number.

Eliminate Your Phone Number From Facebook.

If the above scared you, possibly you should not have your telephone number on Facebook in the very first location. Follow the actions to eliminate your phone number from Facebook. If you do not provide information to Facebook, those who utilize the social media network cannot use it to find you, or versus you.

Such articles How Do I Remove My Phone Number From Facebook thanks for visiting can hopefully help you out.