Facebook often knows phone numbers or email addresses even if owners have never shared them with the social network. This can happen if other Instagram, Facebook or Facebook Messenger users have shared the contact information in their address book. Facebook creates more transparency with a new data protection function.
Anyone who uses an app on their smartphone also agrees that the app may access various data. Although access to data can be restricted in the app permissions, this does not help if other users are somewhat careless with the release. Many apps can access the address books of the users and thus possibly get information from people who do not use the corresponding app of the meta group at all. However, a tool published by Facebook itself reveals what the group knows about someone. At the same time, the data can also be deleted.
New privacy feature on Facebook
Facebook’s parent company Meta provides the corresponding data protection function on a Facebook page. There you can check whether contact information has been shared with the company. Although the tool has existed since May 2022, it is still relatively unknown. It can be found on a help page from Facebook. Behind the note “Click here, if you have a question about the rights,” hides another Facebook website. Data protection functions are available on this and you can see to what extent data has been shared. What is particularly explosive is how Facebook gets the data and how Meta merges it during processing.
Whenever a user of Instagram, Facebook or Facebook Messenger consents to the contact syncing or contact uploading feature, Meta is granted access to the device’s address book. That means all contact information of friends, business partners and acquaintances that was filed at some point. Meta also processes the information in the address book when it comes to so-called non-users. In other words, people who had not yet created an account with a corresponding platform.
Meta stores and processes names, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. Uploading to the server brings the data together and Meta can see who knows each other and who is using which services. This makes it possible for the social network to suggest a contact to individual people as a “person you know”. The address books are also analyzed and evaluated in order to determine the number of people and users of meta products.
Also read: Meta takes action against a growing number of fake German news sites
Delete contact information on Facebook
If you want to block your contact information for the meta group, you can do this in a mask Looking for. Within the search, you can filter by mobile phone number, landline number or e-mail address.
If Meta finds the information you are looking for, you can choose whether to delete it. In addition, the confirmation blocks a future data upload to the meta server.
Useful function for more data protection?
It is questionable whether the Facebook function provides more data protection. First of all, due to the mass scanning of the address books of users with meta services, there should hardly be anyone whose data does not appear at all. A telephone number or e-mail address in particular quickly disappears in the address book of smartphones.
It’s good that there is a delete function for more data protection. There’s just one more question – what else does Meta actually know? The group also does not really delete the cell phone number. Blocking is probably the right word. Because Meta has to save that a certain phone number is blocked for use. Another criticism is that it only checks whether the data was uploaded by another user. Meta could also create so-called shadow profiles by tracking website visits through tracking tools such as Facebook pixels. This makes it possible to track Internet users across different websites.
At a hearing of Mark Zuckerberg in the American Congress in 2018, it was already revealed that such “shadow profiles” exist. At the time, the question was how to have control over your data if you don’t know that it is circulating in the company. Let alone that there is consent to the use of data. The data protection function published on Facebook is a first step towards gaining control over your own data.
However, it could also be an attempt to forestall regulatory action. Because in the EU, the meta group had problems with the EU Commission, which had concerns about taking over the Messenger WhatsApp. Facebook said at the time that it was not technically possible to transfer the data. Meta then wanted to merge WhatsApp’s contact information with Facebook profiles in 2016. The EU Commission saw itself deceived and then pronounced a 110 million fine against Facebook in 2017. Stronger future regulation is still in the air.