Facebook sure is sneaky!
BE ADVISED: ALL THE PHONE NUMBERS/CONTACT INFO IN YOUR PHONE are now on Facebook!
No joke! This is a HUGE invasion of privacy. I was shocked when I discovered this today. If your page gets hacked, then ALL of your contacts in your cell phone become a target. I know a lot of people keep passwords and the like in their contacts as well so all of this now has the potential to fall into the wrong hands.
Don’t believe that Facebook would do such a thing? Here is how you can see for yourself:
1. Login to Facebook from your PC.
2. From the HOME page, go to the top right of the screen and click on Account.
3. Click on Edit Friends
4. Look at the left on the screen and click on Contacts. All phone numbers are published to your profile!!
This makes me pretty uncomfortable. If my contact information is in YOUR phone, I really do not want Facebook having access to it. Plus, if your privacy settings on Facebook are pretty liberal, all of your friends or even strangers can view your contacts and hence MY information.
Here is the fix…it is a two step process:
First, you need to change a couple of setting in your phone.
1. This will be a little different for everyone depending on your phone however, in your phone, open your contacts and find your settings. There should be a setting for the SYNC option. Select this and disable/turn off auto syncing and manual syncing with Facebook.
2. You will then need to access Facebook from your smartphone. Use the Application that is the default Facebook App for your phone and NOT any of the Apps you might have purchased or downloaded from the marketplace. Go into your settings and disable the syncing function here as well. Mine was in my main settings. Yours might be there or you may have to click on Friends and then change setting from that screen.
Here is what you need to do from your computer.
1. Go to this link: https://www.facebook.com/contact_importer/remove_uploads.php?r=%2Fphonebook
Here is what you should see:
Remove Imported Contacts
Imported contacts are displayed on your Invites and Imported Contacts pageand synced mobile contacts are displayed in your Facebook Phonebook. Contacts may be used to improve the quality of friend suggestions for you and your friends.
If you remove imported and synced contacts:
· Friend suggestions for you and your friends may become less relevant.
· Your phonebook will no longer include synced contacts, but will still display the contact info of friends who have included it on their profiles.
Note: Before you click Remove, you need to make sure syncing is switched off.
To do this, open the Facebook application on your iPhone, click the Friends icon in the main menu, then click Sync in the upper-right.
2. Click REMOVE.
Here is what you should see:
Remove Imported Contacts
Your request is being processed and you’ll be notified as soon as it’s complete. Depending on the size of your contact list, this may take a few minutes. Thanks for your patience!
Please share this with everyone you know. Email it, blog it, post it as your status, snail mail it, Tweet it, Pin it, Stumble it, etc… Sadly, this should become my most viewed post. Because Facebook is invading our privacy in a HUGE way and everyone needs to know about it.
Blessings,
Jennifer
Just so you know, you can do this (and I did), but if any of your friends have chosen to share their phone number in their profile, you will still see their numbers in the contact list on facebook. There are several phone numbers on my contact list that are not in my phone. Just thought I’d put that out there.
At the top of the page, it says, “Your Contacts list is like a phonebook that only you can see. It includes numbers that 1) you may have synced from your phone or 2) your friends have chosen to share with you.”
It’s not getting the contacts from your phone, it’s populating the list from your friends’ FB profiles who have chosen to make their phone numbers public. It syncs the phone numbers TO your phone, not FROM it. And it’s not publishing the contacts list to your profile. Whether or not you choose to share your phone number on your FB profile is a personal security setting.
Additional clarification on this post. When I opened the contacts link on my FB page, ALL of the contacts in my phone were there. This includes former clients, doctors, friends, etc… The vast majority of these contacts are not FB friends.
IF you have your smart phone set to sync your phone contacts with FB then YES, ALL of your phone contacts will show up on your FB contacts.
Just to make sure I was not passing on misinformation, I spoke to my friend who works for Sprint (my service provider) and she said that with the Android FB App, contacts are synced both TO your phone from FB and FROM your phone to FB. You have to manually change the setting.
The issue I have with this is in the event that a hacker gets into your FB account all kinds of personal information is available to them. So make sure you are not syncing your entire phone book! Unless you want to expose yourself and your friends to hackers or course!
I see what you’re talking about now, that the app has the capability to sync numbers both ways. It only does that if you have your permissions set that way (I have an Android phone and use FB on it, and my phone contacts have not been automatically added to FB without my consent). I want to reassure you though, that if someone wanted your phone numbers, they wouldn’t hack into your Facebook account, they would just steal your phone.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2011/02/17/everyones-phone-numbers-are-now-on-facebook.htm