Why You Should Never Give Facebook Your Phone Number

If Facebook doesn't hold enough of your personal information as it is, one user found out the hard way what happens when you share your phone number with the social media network. 

A psychotherapist told Fusion that when she shared her phone number with Facebook, her patients who are stored in her phonebook started to be recommended as 'People You May Know' whenever she logged on. And if that wasn't inappropriate enough, they started to be recommended to one another too, meaning fellow patients (some with serious mental health conditions) were effectively being 'outed' as receiving therapy.

Carrie-Ann Skinner, Good Housekeeping's tech expert, recommends avoiding sharing your phone number with Facebook if you want to keep yourself private.'If you don't want people to have your phone number to find you on Facebook, then don't add it to your profile,' she told us. 'Even if it's only viewable by you, people can still search for you using your phone number, and your phonebook can be used to recommend people as new connections on Facebook.' 

How to remove your phone number from Facebook: ​