FaceBook May Collect Your Phone Number Without Your Knowledge: This is How to Delete it

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Facebook might collect your phone number without your knowledge. Here are a few tips on how to delete it.

Both social media platforms, namely Facebook and Instagram, both tend to store user personal data, even if they never use their services. There is a tool to find out and delete it if necessary.

Like many services on the internet, the Facebook business model is based on the exploitation of personal data. In fact, the company run by Mark Zuckerberg continues to gather a large amount of phenomenal information about users of the social media platform. Even unconsciously by the user. And including if they are not Facebook users.

But it is also possible to check whether Facebook has their personal contact details, such as telephone numbers or email addresses. With the possibility, if necessary, delete it from a social networking database and block access to prevent it recovering it later.

A solution where Facebook is careful not to communicate during its distribution in May 2022, hidden in the depth of the Facebook assistance page. According to the American Business Insider report,

Delete Personal Data: Instructions for Use

This function concerns all internet users. Even those who had previously canceled the Facebook or Instagram subscription, or who had never had an account on the platform. Indeed, when subscribing to their services, Facebook and Instagram asked users to import contact lists from their smartphones, officially to connect them more easily with their loved ones on this social network.

But by operating this way, Facebook automatically gain access to personal data from all directory (telephone number and email address). Including, therefore, people who were not present on the platform. And with several billion users in the world, there is a high possibility that internet users who do not use Facebook will find their numbers on the server platform.

This can be very dangerous during a large leak, because the telephone number has been stored by Facebook, as happened in 2021.

How to delete personal data stored on social media

Here is how to access a tool that allows you to delete your personal data on the Facebook platform:

• On the site, Facebook has a page (accessible here) to find contact details, to find out if they are stored on the server.
• You then have to enter contact information (telephone number or email address) and select the platform that Meta must sear: Facebook and Messenger or Instagram.
• After the information is entered, Meta sends the confirmation code to the email address or telephone number entered previously.
• After the code is entered, Facebook asks to click "Confirm" if internet users want the information to be deleted and blocked, so that Facebook will never be added again. After selecting this option, a message shows that the request was successful.

As shown by Business Insider, this is just a drop of data that Facebook has about individuals. However, for people who do not use social networks, telephone numbers and email addresses are an important part of this information.

Facebook's responsibility in managing personal data is rather heavy: social networking has been hit by controversy several times, the most famous is the affairs of Cambridge Analytica.