See thread! Using security to further weaken privacy is a lousy move-especially since phone numbers can be hijacked to weaken security. Security expert and academic Zeynep Tufekci said in a tweet: “Using security to further weaken privacy is a lousy move - especially since phone numbers can be hijacked to weaken security,” referring to SIM swapping, where scammers impersonate cell customers to steal phone numbers and break into other accounts. It’s a more restricted way than allowing users to search for user profiles using a person’s phone number, which Facebook restricted last year after admitting “most” users had their information scraped.įacebook gives users the option of allowing users to “look up” their profile using their phone number to “everyone” by default, or to “friends of friends” or just the user’s “friends.”īut there’s no way to hide it completely. zpYhuwADMSĪlthough users can hide their phone number on their profile so nobody can see it, it’s still possible to “look up” user profiles in other ways, such as “when someone uploads your contact info to Facebook from their mobile phone,” according to a Facebook help article. Now it can be searched and there's no way to disable that. For years Facebook claimed the adding a phone number for 2FA was only for security.

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