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Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

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Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#91

Post by chii »

wtmt wrote: post #52
snarfy wrote: post #20

Glad I never gave them my number.

You can't be sure that Facebook doesn't have your number unless you have never given your phone number to anyone who uses Facebook and has your name and phone number. They could be friends, co-workers, relatives, delivery people, cab drivers and many other service providers. One of them shares their address book with Facebook and it knows. A few of them share their address books with Facebook and it's reasonably sure…

This is why I hate that people carelessly let any third party app have access to their contact list.

I can keep my data out of Facebook,but "friends and family" usually aren't careful and get tricked into opening up all that info.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#92

Post by Tor3 »

gumby wrote: post #61
potatofarmer45 wrote: post #14

This will make keeping your social media private during recruiting much much harder because rather than trying to search for your name on FB or your email, an interviewer can just search your listed contact number. Names are often not unique but phone numbers are. This matters because creating a new email account for recruiting is trivial, yet creating a new phone number for recruiting is not. Most phones are not dua…

My GF uses a google voice number (and separate gmail accounts) for job search purposes both for this reason and because she can nuke the phone number later, cutting off headhunters once she'd found something she likes.

Sounds useful. It's unfortunate that google voice still isn't available outside North America. I don't know if that is for technical reasons or for (European/Asian) political reasons. But it sure would have been nice to keep separate numbers the same way it's sometimes necessary to keep separate google accounts.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#93

Post by Tor3 »

raverbashing wrote: post #78
potatofarmer45 wrote: post #14

This will make keeping your social media private during recruiting much much harder because rather than trying to search for your name on FB or your email, an interviewer can just search your listed contact number. Names are often not unique but phone numbers are. This matters because creating a new email account for recruiting is trivial, yet creating a new phone number for recruiting is not. Most phones are not dua…

Phones are not unique but a lot of them are reused when a subscriber changes provider (They could have always searched you by name, if you're worried about your identity then it makes sense to not connect your phone number to FB)

>but a lot of them are reused when a subscriber changes provider

OT, but I had a not-so-nice experience with that. Some years ago I got myself a data-only phone number/SIM card for my 3G dongle.

It turned out that the number was reused, and the previous owner of that number had subscribed to a pay-for message service for upcoming events (concerts, movies, etc). And they kept arriving to my data-only dongle, and I didn't notice for a while. Had to pay for it, though.

I don't remember how I eventually managed to turn that off (the software for accessing/manipulating that part of the dongle was Windows only).

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#94

Post by Vinnl »

bwann wrote: post #84
cbzbc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can set it to be searchable by friends only, which should avoid recruiters being able to do this, unless they are adding themselves as friends first.

I totally get people want a "only me" option here, but really how bad is "friends-only" here? If I'm "friends" with you, you probably already know my phone number in real life.

I'm not really actively using Facebook anymore, but when I did, the threshold for becoming a "Facebook friend" was a lot lower than that for regular friends, or people I shared my phone number with.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#95

Post by Vinnl »

dgellow wrote: post #66

Isn’t it the same for Twitter? I tried recently to create a second account, it’s now impossible to do so without specifying a phone number during signup. And the mobile application was trying to access my contact list, which seems to be used to suggest people to follow by looking for their phone number (see https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/upload-your-contac... ).

I think there's a "Sign up with email" link on Twitter.

Though of course, every time I created a new account there it was quickly blocked, only allowing me to unblock it by providing a phone number. That might have to do with a number of privacy-enhancing browser extensions I've got installed.

That said, thanks to GDPR, I'm relatively confident that they've actually deleted my phone number when I asked them to after verification.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#96

Post by Already__Taken »

on_and_off wrote: post #34
potatofarmer45 wrote: post #14

This will make keeping your social media private during recruiting much much harder because rather than trying to search for your name on FB or your email, an interviewer can just search your listed contact number. Names are often not unique but phone numbers are. This matters because creating a new email account for recruiting is trivial, yet creating a new phone number for recruiting is not. Most phones are not dua…

There are also a non negligible number of people using an alias on facebook because they have good reason. Apparently when a woman uses a pseudonym on facebook, it is not unlikely that it is because of a nasty/stalkerish ex that she would rather get away from. I am actually in favor of a transparent society (a la david brin) , but we have to grown up a lot and handle such cases before the advantages that come with it…

see also: Any employee in the education sector would have good reason.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#97

Post by wwweston »

gotocake wrote: post #58
willio58 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So get off public social networks. Problem solved.

I realize that you’re getting slammed for a pat, trite, or unhelpful answer to a complex problem, but it also happens to be the only answer. It’s an answer with real consequences, but when weighed against giving your privacy over to FB what else is to be done right now? Public social networks are poison, they’re inimical to privacy, and we need to get off of any that harvest personal information. Telling people to “q…

> but it also happens to be the only answer.

"Only" oversells the option. There's also:

* mix fake/mining-hostile data in with real data as needed for social media profiles * use public institutions to enact consumer protection policies

Both of these have their own difficulties and limits, of course, but so does ditching social media entirely.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#98

Post by usrusr »

Already__Taken wrote: post #96
on_and_off wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also a non negligible number of people using an alias on facebook because they have good reason. Apparently when a woman uses a pseudonym on facebook, it is not unlikely that it is because of a nasty/stalkerish ex that she would rather get away from. I am actually in favor of a transparent society (a la david brin) , but we have to grown up a lot and handle such cases before the advantages that come with it…

see also: Any employee in the education sector would have good reason.

I wonder how long it takes until the whole teaching profession just collectively decides to adopt professional pseudonyms. Would make "child at same school"-situations even more awkward I guess.

Re: Facebook won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting

#100

Post by swish_bob »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #47
6nf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry someone in your circle of friends already handed it over.

Exactly. It takes just one person who knows your phone number to upload their entire contact list and it's saved. The likelihood that Facebook doesn't have your phone number and name is 0% unless you don't have a phone number.

It's worse than that. If you gave them your phone number, you can ask to see it and have them to erase it. If one of your contacts gave them your number, it's _their_ data, you cannot get Facebook to confirm they have it and you can't ask them to remove it ...
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