How to Delete Contacts Uploaded by Facebook Without Your Permission
Facebook’s public image has been taking a hit lately and the social media platform situation continues to deteriorate. According to a recent report from Business Insider India , Facebook has been downloading information from its users’ email contacts since 2016. Facebook did this “unintentionally” and without warning when users created their accounts for the first time or when they used their email accounts to confirm login.
This happened to over 1.5 million users, according to a Business Insider report. Facebook says it will contact the affected users and promised to remove their contact information shortly, and in the meantime has disabled email confirmation of login.
While it’s good to hear that Facebook will fix this soon, it won’t necessarily help the company save face from its recent string of serious security bugs . Fortunately, users don’t have to wait for the company to take action. We’ll show you how to take action in your own hands and remove any contact information that Facebook has accidentally pulled from your email and phone contacts.
How to remove contact information uploaded to Facebook
The first step here is preventative: Don’t let Facebook apps access your email / phone contacts when prompted if you’re installing them for the first time (be it a regular Facebook app, Facebook Lite, Messenger or Messenger Lite). Synchronizing contacts is a built-in feature of these apps, but given how poorly Facebook seems to handle this type of data, it would probably be wise not to use it for now.
However, as noted in the Business Insider article, the accidental data collection occurred without warning users when creating accounts and when confirming login via email. This means that even if you previously denied these app permissions or simply did not use the Facebook apps in the first place, your data could still be affected through your email. Here’s how to delete email and phone contact information through Facebook.com and how to turn off contact syncing in all Facebook and Messenger apps.
Removing Downloaded Contact Information from Facebook.com
This is the best (and in some cases the only) way to remove the downloaded contact information from your Facebook account, but it will not disable the automatic contact sync options in any Facebook or Messenger apps you have installed. If you are using any of the Facebook mobile apps, please follow the steps below to disable these settings before deleting any data stored here.
- Log in to Facebook.com .
- Go to the contact management page .
- Here you can view and delete any downloaded Facebook contact information synced and saved from your phone and / or email.
Disable syncing for contacts in Facebook mobile apps
This will stop the Facebook mobile apps from automatically downloading contact information to your device. You will also need to turn this off on Messenger (we’ll cover that in the section below). After you have disabled the download contacts option for any of these applications, you will need to delete all saved contact information through the Facebook website using the method described above.
Facebook app for Android:
- Open the menu tab at the top of the application window, then go to Settings & Privacy> Preferences> Media & Contacts> Media & Contacts.
- Disable “Continuous download of contacts”.
Facebook iOS app:
- Tap the menu icon at the bottom of the application window.
- Go to Settings & Privacy> Settings> Media & Contacts> Upload Contacts.
- Disable “Upload Contacts”
Facebook Lite:
- From the menu tab, select Settings> Media & Contacts> Download Contacts.
- Disable the Download Contacts setting.
Disable contact sync in Messenger apps
As we said in the Facebook apps section, you will need to disable this setting for both Messenger apps and Facebook apps. However, unlike the Facebook apps, Messenger will automatically delete your saved phone contacts when you disable this setting. You can also delete saved Messenger contacts by going to Manage Downloaded Contacts > Delete All Contacts> Delete All Contacts . However, we still recommend confirming that all phone and email contact information is deleted on Facebook.com after you turn off Messenger contact sync.
Messenger for Android and iOS:
- Open the app, then go to your profile tab and click People.
- Disable ” Upload Contacts”.
- Your contacts will be automatically deleted.
Messenger Lite:
- Tap your profile picture in the upper right corner of the home screen.
- Tap People.
- Disable “Sync Phone Contacts”.
- All synced contacts will be deleted.