Why You Can’t Let People Search for You by Your Phone Number on Facebook
Getting an apartment in San Francisco is a competitive nightmare, so I was thrilled to find that the landlord I was texting with to arrange a viewing of the apartment happened to be a friend of a good friend of mine. She did not tell me, and we are not friends on Facebook: I found out about this because her phone number is stored on a social network. When we started to agree on the time for viewing the apartment, my phone automatically uploaded her avatar and linked it to her account.
Admittedly, I thought it was a little creepy to send the “I just saw you are friends with my friend” email, but I did and therefore got a (rather nasty) apartment. #NoRegrets, although it may have one. I doubt that sharing her Facebook account with random people looking at her apartment was intentional. By having your phone number on the site, you allow anyone with your number (be it a plumber or someone you met at a bar last night) to find your profile.
While I discovered my landlord’s friend list with a few simple texts, this feature also works somewhat the other way around, letting people know your phone number.
Hacker Noon notes that whenever “Who can find me by phone” is set to public in Facebook’s privacy settings, your phone number is also public. By default, this is a public setting, in general, your privacy setting for “Who can find me” also overrides what you set for the phone number. So, if you have your privacy settings configured so that anyone can find you, then anyone can see your phone number.
When it comes to adding your Facebook number, your only privacy options are essentially sharing that number with everyone, friends of friends and friends. There is no “just me” option.
And you might not realize that Facebook even has your number: the app repeatedly asks you to verify your number for security reasons. It’s easy for you to add it during one of these “confirmations” without realizing that you accidentally passed your number to the masses.
In an article explaining how Facebook figures out everyone you met, Gizmodo notes that “shadow profiles, such as the People You May Know system, that they use, cannot be turned off or abandoned. The only thing you can do to prevent Facebook’s contact-based communications is to prevent people from finding your profile through the privacy settings menu by searching for your phone number or email address. “
If you would like to remove your number from Facebook (or see if it is there at all), you can do so by clicking the down arrow in the upper right corner of your profile page and then selecting “Settings” from the drop-down menu. From there, select “General” in the sidebar and then “Contact” to see if you have a number on the list. You can specify who can search for you by choosing Privacy from the menu on the left side of the page, and then changing the Who can search for you by phone number setting.