Facebook Doesn't Let You Hide From Its Phone Number 'Look Up' Feature

There have been complaints from Facebook users about their phone number used for two-factor authentication allowing looking up their profiles. What makes it worse is Facebook doesn’t let users opt-out of that. The incident was reported by TechCrunch.

In 2018, the social network under pressure had to admit that it was using users’ phone numbers to target them with advertisements, after months of effort to hassle them for two-factor authentication using cell numbers. However, it’s by default that anyone – with or without a Facebook account – can look up a user’s profile with the same number added to their account, according to users' recent findings.

The breach surfaced after a post appeared on Twitter, criticizing Facebook for collecting and taking advantage of user phone numbers which he considered a unique ID for identification on all online platforms.

As stated in a Facebook help article, phone numbers can be hide so that no one is able to see it in the user profile, but others can still look up the profile by a number of ways, like if a person uploads your number on the platform from their phone.

Facebook lets users choose to whether let others to look up their profiles with phone numbers by everyone, friends of friends, or friends.

But there’s no option to completely hide it.

Academic and security expert Zeynep Tufekci also tweeted about the problem, mocking the use of security to further weaken privacy is a bad move from Facebook. By that, he meant hackers can still user’s phone numbers and target their friends.

Meanwhile, a Facebook person said that the settings have been there for a while and affect any cell number added to user profiles as well as not particular for any feature.

Gizmodo last year reported that after one or two weeks after registering two-factor authentication, they became ad-targeted. However, even when users don’t set up two-factor authentication, Facebook still collects their phone numbers, no need for permission.

An Irish data protection agency is requesting further information from the social network to understand the matter better.

Back in 2017, a Telegraph reporter said she hadn’t provided Facebook with her phone number and had no idea her number could be found and used to look her up.

Ironically, the only response Facebook had for its concerned users is:

Does it sound familiar to you?

When Facebook gets asked if it will let users hide their phone numbers from the look-up feature, the company declined to comment on its future plans. And responding to the question of why the option “everyone” was set by default, Facebook said that helps users find people they know but haven’t become friends on the platform.