285 days

Helen A.S. Popkin

Don't freak out! Facebook didn't publish your mobile contacts

Facebook may be replacing old timey email for much of our e-communication needs, but we've adapted some of our most annoying habits to fit this exciting new medium!. For example: Blindly clicking on, cutting and pasting specious information of an alarmist nature that somehow seems all the more credible for its cap lock abuse. Case in point, this popular status once again making the Facebook rounds:

OMG this is for real everyone!!!! Warning to ALL ...ALL THE PHONE NUMBERS IN YOUR PHONE are now on Facebook! No joke - go to the top right of the screen, click on Account, then click on Edit Friends, go left on the screen and click on Contacts. All phone numbers are published!! Please re-post this on your Status, so your friends can remove their numbers and thus prevent abuse if they do not want them published.

Listen, seriously: Your mobile phone contacts synced to your Facebook account is nothing new, but nobody else can see them. Just to make sure however, we asked Facebook and a spokesperson told us this:

Our Contacts list, formerly called Phonebook, has existed for a long time. The phone numbers listed there were either added by the friends themselves and made visible to you or have been previously synced from your Facebook for iPhone application. This is not new functionality and is unrelated to Facebook Messenger.

If for some reason you're only learning now that the phone number you included on your Facebook profile can be seen by others — if you didn't change the default privacy settings — this is nothing new, either. While Facebook's privacy settings leave much to be desired, the social network has made efforts over the last year to both simplify privacy settings and educate users about their options. 

Since we're on the subject, we should probably remind you that if you access third party apps — games, quizzes, etc., — you could be giving those third parties permission to access your personal information, including your phone number and address if you've included them on your profile. You should see a prompt with the fine print information, you just have to take the time to read it. Again, this is nothing new.

So let's review: "ALL THE PHONE NUMBERS IN YOUR PHONE are now on Facebook!" True, but nobody visiting your Facebook profile can see them. What's more, the Contacts feature only includes the phone numbers of your Facebook friends who also share their phone numbers on their Facebook profile. While the cap lock warnings in your friends' status updates may freak you out, this isn't a new thing Facebook is hiding from you.

So what's the big deal now?

This new status cut-and-paste spam may be inspired by yesterday's launch of the aforementioned Facebook Messenger mobile app for iPhone and Android that allows users send instant messages to individuals and to groups. The new mobile feature is also hiding unactivated components that might be linked to a Skype-powered video chat feature built into the Facebook website (though there is no official word from Facebook on that).

It's always a good idea to review and stay familiar with your Facebook settings and Sophos security has an easy-to-follow Best Practices for Facebook Security you can review here. We encourage you to do that, and learn as much as you can about the business with which you share so much of your personal information.

Meanwhile, if you'd rather not share your phone number, mobile or otherwise, with others, you can either delete your phone number from your profile setting or choose who can see your phone numbers in your privacy settings.

If you don't want the numbers in your mobile phone available in your Facebook account, do this:

• From the Account menu in the upper right side of your Facebook profile, chose Edit Friends.
• From the top far left of your Friends page, choose Contacts.
• On the top far right of your Phonebook Contacts page, you will see this note:

Phonebook Contacts
Facebook Phonebook displays contacts you have imported from your phone, as well as your Facebook friends.
If you would like to remove your mobile contacts from Facebook, you need to disable the feature on your mobile phone and visit this page.

• Click the "this page" link. It will take you to Remove Imported Contacts. Follow the directions and you are good to go.  

More on the annoying way we live now:

• Facebook launches Messenger app for iPhone, Android
• Facebook hid video chat feature in new iPhone app
• Facebook hid secret iPad app inside official iPhone app

Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet. Tell her to get a real job on Twitter and/or Facebook. Also, Google+.