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The Facebook phone numbers are now searchable in Have I Been Pwned

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Re: The Facebook phone numbers are now searchable in Have I Been Pwned

#101

Post by newscracker »

intrasight wrote: post #86

Honest question: Why would you give your phone number to FB? Related to their app perhaps (which I don't have)?

Over the years, many people who were stuck in the Facebook platform have been coerced by Facebook into providing a phone number to “verify” their account. The other choice given to them was (and is) to lose access to the account because Facebook believes it’s a fake account or a spam account or a “violation of its community policy”.

In other cases, Facebook may get the phone number because someone uploaded their address book/contacts to it. This information shouldn’t be in the user’s public/private profile (even though Facebook would store it internally, use it to figure out other connections and “show relevant ads”).

Re: The Facebook phone numbers are now searchable in Have I Been Pwned

#102

Post by sethammons »

mcculley wrote: post #55
cwhiz wrote: post #54

Getting to the point where we’re going to need phone, email, and SMS to be deny all by default. Can’t reach me unless you’re information is already in my contacts.

I get a lot of value out of being reachable by people I do not yet know.

I found a novel solution by accident to this. I moved to a new area but kept my old number. 99% of my spam calls are from my phone’s area code. If you are not a contact and a number comes up from that area code, it is spam. If it is my new area code, it is a person or business trying to reach me.

You could likely get a far off area coded number.

Re: The Facebook phone numbers are now searchable in Have I Been Pwned

#103

Post by ct0 »

rpaddock wrote: post #73

After my wife's suicide (See the documentary Pain Warriors) I took over Karen's FB account as my own, and I changed the name on the account. Long before this breach I have been getting SMS Spam addressing me as Karen, on a number that did not exist when she was alive. FB data can be the only possible source of that spam. The spam is always trying to sell male enhancement products to 'Karen'. Anyone know how to stop t…

My phone has an option called Do Not Disturb mode. I have set a schedule to turn it on everyday from 12AM to 11:59PM. What Do Not Disturb will do is block (silence the notification or ringer) every message or call from someone that is not in your phone book. While unfortunately you'll still get the spam SMS, but you wont get the alert.

The only way I can see striking back at these spam calls is to pick up the call and waste their time, because its expensive. Also if I pick up that means someone else is not getting scammed. I try to get as far along in the scam process as possible.

Re: The Facebook phone numbers are now searchable in Have I Been Pwned

#104

Post by mdp2021 »

rpaddock wrote: post #73

After my wife's suicide (See the documentary Pain Warriors) I took over Karen's FB account as my own, and I changed the name on the account. Long before this breach I have been getting SMS Spam addressing me as Karen, on a number that did not exist when she was alive. FB data can be the only possible source of that spam. The spam is always trying to sell male enhancement products to 'Karen'. Anyone know how to stop t…

If you only mean "how not to be bothered" (instead of radical actual solutions of legal nature etc.), and the sender is a recurring number, very probably your phone OS has an option to reject calls and/or messages from specific numbers.

Re: The Facebook phone numbers are now searchable in Have I Been Pwned

#106

Post by magsnus »

rpaddock wrote: post #73

After my wife's suicide (See the documentary Pain Warriors) I took over Karen's FB account as my own, and I changed the name on the account. Long before this breach I have been getting SMS Spam addressing me as Karen, on a number that did not exist when she was alive. FB data can be the only possible source of that spam. The spam is always trying to sell male enhancement products to 'Karen'. Anyone know how to stop t…

Sorry for your loss. Right now I'm pretty happy that I scrubbed all information of my FB account months ago. If only people could stop using messenger so I could delete it.

But I have a similar, but unrelated to FB, problem in that every month I get an offer to work as a nurse in Norway from different agencies. I figured they scraped some "find the number"-site here in Sweden long ago and since my mothers name was on my bill I guess my number somehow came up under her name.

It's been annoying for years but since my mother had a some (non-corona) medical problems last year it has been downright infuriating at times. Anyone know how to make it stop when there is a bunch of different agencies messaging you?

Re: The Facebook phone numbers are now searchable in Have I Been Pwned

#107

Post by input_sh »

mdp2021 wrote: post #104
rpaddock wrote: post #73

After my wife's suicide (See the documentary Pain Warriors) I took over Karen's FB account as my own, and I changed the name on the account. Long before this breach I have been getting SMS Spam addressing me as Karen, on a number that did not exist when she was alive. FB data can be the only possible source of that spam. The spam is always trying to sell male enhancement products to 'Karen'. Anyone know how to stop t…

If you only mean "how not to be bothered" (instead of radical actual solutions of legal nature etc.), and the sender is a recurring number, very probably your phone OS has an option to reject calls and/or messages from specific numbers.

There was a spammer that bothered me, I blocked the number, and started receiving spam from adjacent ones (same number, just the last digit increasing by 1). Had to block 5-6 for them to go away.

Re: The Facebook phone numbers are now searchable in Have I Been Pwned

#108

Post by hnrodey »

devgoldm wrote: post #69

Found my number on there too even though I've deleted Facebook for at least 5 or 6 years now -_- Not sure when I gave them my number either, I hope it wasn't scraped from someone else's contact list... At least it makes sense why I received a bunch of spam calls over the weekend. Anyway it's probably good practice to recycle your number every few years, and not use it for 2FA to make switching numbers a lot easier. W…

I've had the same phone number for somewhere around 17 years. I kept this number even as I moved across the country (US).

Re: The Facebook phone numbers are now searchable in Have I Been Pwned

#109

Post by derwiki »

sethammons wrote: post #102
mcculley wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a lot of value out of being reachable by people I do not yet know.

I found a novel solution by accident to this. I moved to a new area but kept my old number. 99% of my spam calls are from my phone’s area code. If you are not a contact and a number comes up from that area code, it is spam. If it is my new area code, it is a person or business trying to reach me. You could likely get a far off area coded number.

Yea ignoring unknown numbers from my home state is fairly effective at blocking spam calls.

Re: The Facebook phone numbers are now searchable in Have I Been Pwned

#110

Post by darcien »

rpaddock wrote: post #73

After my wife's suicide (See the documentary Pain Warriors) I took over Karen's FB account as my own, and I changed the name on the account. Long before this breach I have been getting SMS Spam addressing me as Karen, on a number that did not exist when she was alive. FB data can be the only possible source of that spam. The spam is always trying to sell male enhancement products to 'Karen'. Anyone know how to stop t…

My deepest condolences.

I think it's pretty hard to stop incoming spam when the number itself has been made public.

The only options I know would be: a. Play whack and mole, report the number to the authority in your country that handles this kind of spam activity. b. Use some kind of mobile application that filter out the spam SMS. This one is kinda hit and miss, since the number data is coming from community reports, so some spam might pass the filter. And there might be some false positives from the spam filter.

I also would like to hear if there's alternative solution for this problem, other than changing the phone number itself.

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