These days, Facebook is very much the social hub for the digital life for the average connected person. What people may not realise is that Facebook makes it keep by finding ways to use our personal information, be it for targeted ads or suggested content.
It probably goes without saying that the more detailed information that can be attributed to a particular person the easier it becomes to identify relationships and distinguish several people with similar characteristics from one another. One such example is a phone number. We all know that phone numbers tend to be unique (unless they are shared) so it would make a great way to tell one John Smith from another.
If you’ve happened to use the Faebook sync feature on iPhone or Android you may be unaware that not only have you downloaded all of your Facebook contacts and also retrieved the smiling profile pictures to your phone but you have also uploaded all of your contact information to Facebook. This means that Facebook potentially has the phone numbers of people who have specifically chosen to withhold that information and can match that information back to those individuals using e-mail addresses or mailing addresses.
When you look at it this way, Facebook sync may not look so good all of a sudden. Luckily, there is an easy way to delete all of this information.
First of all, you need to disable the Facebook sync feature on your phone. On iPhone, you can disable it by going to “Friends” then “Sync” and turning off syncing. Android users may have a specific app that looks after syncing in which case they should be turned off or uninstalled. Once that has been done go to Facebook and do the following:
- Click on “Account” then “Edit Friends”,
- Click on “Phonebook” on the left,
- Click on the link on the right side of the page allowing you to remove your mobile contact (or click here).
Enacting the above process will remove contact information you have provided to Facebook from your mobile phone. It might take a few minutes to clean up which will leave information already provided by your contacts.
If you want to go one step further and remove your phone numbers from Facebook, you can do so by doing the following:
- Go to your profile page,
- Click “Edit My Profile” on the left,
- Click on “Contact Information” on the left,
- Delete your phone numbers and other contact information as you see fit,
- Click “Save Changes”.
It’s important to remember that once you release information it can be very hard to control so despite Facebook offering privacy settings to prevent such information from being seen by the world, Facebook can still use it for their commercial advantage. So don’t hesitate in reclaiming control over the use of your personal information and take responsibility for your data.
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