Facebook secretly allows you to be looked up via your 2FA phone number and you can't opt...

[DPennington]

WTF?! Facebook is using the phone numbers they collect via two-factor authentication to serve ads, and now it turns out you can't opt out of the service once you've opted in. Additionally, Facebook is using the phone numbers as a "unique identifier," allowing everyone with an account to look up any user by their phone number. These uses of the data they collected under the guise of 2FA is sketchy at best, and nefarious at worse, and the company has once again come under fire for its data collection and security practices.

Facebook has already admitted to using phone numbers collected under the guise of two-factor authentication in order to target ads, and now it turns out you can't opt-out of the service once you're committed.

Two-factor authentication, or 2FA, is used to secure Facebook accounts by requiring a user to either answer a prompt on their phone or input a code texted to them when they log into the site from a new device or unrecognized browser. When Facebook originally rolled out 2FA, there was no indication that the phone numbers they were collecting would be used for advertising or tied to a user's profile.

As it turns out, Facebook's default setting allows anyone to look up your profile using your phone number, even if you only used it for 2FA and never actually added it to your profile.

Emoji historian (yes, that's his real occupation) Jeremy Burge sounded the alarm on Twitter after noticing that the setting to allow people to look up users via their phone number was set to "everyone" by default.

For years Facebook claimed the adding a phone number for 2FA was only for security. Now it can be searched and there's no way to disable that. pic.twitter.com/zpYhuwADMS

— Jeremy Burge (@jeremyburge) March 1, 2019

To disable the phone number look-up feature, open the Facebook menu and select "settings." From there, click on the "privacy" tab and you'll find the setting in question under the "how people find and contact you" banner.

This is only one example of many when it comes to potentially nefarious uses of your data by Facebook. In addition to illegally collecting data from many popular Android apps, other sketchy behavior includes disabling logging out of Messenger, the merging of messaging platforms even across apps they don't own, and massive data leaks of sensitive user information.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/79017-facebook-secretly-allows-you-looked-up-2fa-phone.html

 

[Dosahka]

Best way is:
Open Facebook App > Settings > Personal information and tap Remove under your Phone number.
You phone number info will not update immediately, so you have to either close the app or go back to News Feed.

 

[wiyosaya]

Personally, I am glad I never started using fakebook. Each time I hear something like this, I pat myself on the back.

 

[mbrowne5061]

I feel like this should have been obvious, with how hard they were pushing people to give Facebook their cell phone numbers to enable 2FA. No company cares that much security, not when their revenue is based on selling account information.

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

I feel like this should have been obvious, with how hard they were pushing people to give Facebook their cell phone numbers to enable 2FA. No company cares that much security, not when their revenue is based on selling account information.

This ^^ right here. Its wasn't only 2FA either. It has tapered off now but I swear I was getting so fed up with the spammed message when logging in: "Add your phone number to your profile. 35 of your friends have added their phone numbers to their profile." For a while it was every single time I logged in I'd get that popup. Have not seen it in a while though.

 

[psycros]

AT&T got broken up just for being a monopoly. Facebook can try its best to portray itself as just another innocent online service but their the only social network that matters to consumers. That makes them a monopoly. Combine that fact with their repeated, indefensible violations of both user trust and privacy laws and their ripe for a massive round of government fines. If a person is foolish enough to post their real personal information online without paying attention to the TOS that's their own unfortunate failing. However, when a service invades every aspect of your digital (and real!) life in order to spy on you, breaking multiple laws in in the process, that's another matter. The blood is in the water now..Facebook is going to have to go into full damage control mode and make real changes or their stock will nosedive and the sharks will come. Frankly, it couldn't happen to nicer bunch of scumbags. Once Facebook has been reined in Amazon and Google should be next. I'm sure their selling us out almost as badly.

 

[wiyosaya]

AT&T got broken up just for being a monopoly. Facebook can try its best to portray itself as just another innocent online service but their the only social network that matters to consumers. That makes them a monopoly. Combine that fact with their repeated, indefensible violations of both user trust and privacy laws and their ripe for a massive round of government fines. If a person is foolish enough to post their real personal information online without paying attention to the TOS that's their own unfortunate failing. However, when a service invades every aspect of your digital (and real!) life in order to spy on you, breaking multiple laws in in the process, that's another matter. The blood is in the water now..Facebook is going to have to go into full damage control mode and make real changes or their stock will nosedive and the sharks will come. Frankly, it couldn't happen to nicer bunch of scumbags. Once Facebook has been reined in Amazon and Google should be next. I'm sure their selling us out almost as badly.

I could not agree with this more!

To me, all of this is based on complete fallacy. The advertising that they are getting paid for does not necessarily work, either, yet every company that pays them for it blindly ignores this. https://digiday.com/marketing/advertising-even-work-anymore/

As I see it, a correction is coming, and it can take down crApazon, fakebook, and gagme; as I see it, it will make the world a substantially better place.

 

[DelJo63]

Facebook has become a nemesis to sanity, privacy and security and joins the applications of SHAME just like Flash did and has which subsequently been replaced by HTML5 features. Like the movie Network, we all should be

poking our heads out the window and shouting, I'M mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more​

 

[Cubi Dorf]

I expecting this is not the only thing they doing with phone numbers. It just thing they got caught.

 

[Aux101]

Personally, I am glad I never started using fakebook. Each time I hear something like this, I pat myself on the back.

So do I.

 

[JamesSWD]

I doubt anything will or can be done about all this, for two reasons:
1) Most in Congress are tech illiterate and borderline full potatoes. Just listen to any of them describe the Internet or how it works.
2) Most in Congress are property...bought & paid for by big tech to do nothing about this malfeasance. Same holds true for most any other SIG or lobbyists with their claws in D.C.

 

[Danny101]

"To disable the phone number look-up feature, open the Facebook menu and select "settings." From there, click on the "privacy" tab and you'll find the setting in question under the "how people find and contact you" banner."

I did this some time ago. Facebook has it's problems, but this isn't a secret if anyone bothered to look. Facebook is under scrutiny right now so this is just parsing out criticism for criticism sake. The criticism they received over Messenger wanting access to your SMS was justified, although I in that didn't allow it and I'm glad I didn't.