Sharing Phone Numbers & Your Privacy on Facebook
June 3rd, 2008
photo: Shereen M
One thing I don’t quite understand is why so many people always manage to lose their mobile phones and then decide they have to start a Facebook group asking everybody for their numbers. I can’t even go on Facebook without my news feed being cluttered with items such as “XXX has joined the group ‘YYY has lost her phone… numbers please!’”. As an example, search Facebook Groups for lost phone numbers.
Worse than that, the contents of group pages are essentially public and when people post their mobile numbers on the wall for the group, anybody in the world could see it. I think that’s something most people don’t realise. Your Facebook profile is protected such that only people on your friends list can see it: groups are public.
I remember placing my mobile number on my Facebook profile a few months ago and then I recieved a few really odd spammy texts shortly afterwards. My suspicion was that someone had perhaps got my number through Facebook (admittedly I don’t know half of the people on my friends list that well!) and decided to spam text it!
Saying that, it’s very useful for other people for you to have a phone number on your Facebook page. So here are my privacy recommendations for sharing your phone number on Facebook:
- On your friends page, click on “Make a New List” in the right column. For example, I’ve created a group of people that I know fairly well from college. Now go to your Facebook Privacy page. From here, you can make your mobile phone number only visible to the group you’ve just created. From the same page, you can change the privacy settings for your current address, land line number, IM screen name and so on.
- Don’t create groups asking for other people’s phone numbers. Use the phonebook which lists the phone numbers of your friends. If you must, use an event instead. This is because events can be marked as “private” and visible only to people who are invited.
- Last of all, don’t post your mobile number on the wall of a public group. Instead, send a private message.
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