Facebook criticised for misuse of phone numbers

Facebook’s under fire again. This time, it’s for using phone numbers provided for security reasons, for other things.

Users are once again accusing Facebook of playing fast and loose with their privacy, allowing users to look up their profiles using the phone number they thought they were only providing for 2FA (two-factor authentication). What’s more, there’s no getting out of it, since Facebook has no opt-out for the “look me up by my phone number” setting.

This latest scandal blew up on Friday, when Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge publicly criticized Facebook’s information-slurping operation:

For years Facebook claimed the adding a phone number for 2FA was only for security. Now it can be searched and ther… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

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Jeremy Burge ?? (@jeremyburge) March 01, 2019

In a string of tweets sent after that, Burge said that he noticed that in September Facebook slipped in an understated “and more,” appended to the original phone number prompt. The “and more” linked to a page that explained that the number would be used for purposes other than securing your account.

The original FB phone number prompt never mentioned “and more”. It was shown for MONTHS before a link was added in… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

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Jeremy Burge ?? (@jeremyburge) March 01, 2019

Burge also noted that getting users to put in their phone number to sign up for services has been “the single greatest coup” for the social media and advertising industries: it’s “one unique ID that is used to link your identity across every platform on the internet,” he said.