Can People Find You on Facebook By Searching for Your Phone Number?

It’s understandable that anyone who has added their phone number to their Facebook profile and adjusted the privacy setting to “Only me” would assume that the information would be kept private, right?

Well, technically that information is kept hidden. It’s not visible whenever someone clicks your profile and views your information; however, people can STILL FIND YOU by entering your phone number into Facebook’s search bar.

The issue lies with the fact that there’s another privacy setting that seems to overlap the phone number visibility setting under the Contact Info section of your Facebook profile.

The specific setting in question, “Who can look you up using the email address or phone number you provided?” can be found under the “How You Connect” section on the Privacy Settings page. Apparently it is set to “Everybody” by default.



It is recommended that you select one of the other two options, “Friends” or “Friends of Friends” – unless, you know, you don’t mind people performing reverse phone number look-ups on you.

Have you entered your phone number to Facebook? Are you concerned about people searching your phone number on Facebook to find your profile?

[via Sophos]

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