Facebook doesn’t allow users to completely block phone number ‘look up’: Report

According to a report, Facebook does not allow users to completely opt-out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting.

Here’s how to update Facebook’s ‘phone number look up’ settings (REUTERS)

Facebook is drawing flak for not giving users the option to completely hide their phone numbers on the platform.

According to a TechCrunch report, Facebook allows anyone to "look up" user profiles when "someone uploads your contact information to the app from their mobile phone."

The flaw was first pointed out by Emojipedia executive Jeremy Burge who said that there was no way to completely disable phone number-based search. In his tweet, he highlighted Facebook's privacy setting which doesn't have any feature to completely hide phone numbers and block anyone from looking up on the platform.

Under "who can look you up using the phone number you provided", Facebook sets the search to "everyone" by default. Users can only limit it to "friends of friends" and "friends." Like Facebook Profile setting, there's no "only me" or "no one" option to hide the number.  

For years Facebook claimed the adding a phone number for 2FA was only for security. Now it can be searched and there's no way to disable that. pic.twitter.com/zpYhuwADMS

— Jeremy Burge 🐥🧿 (@jeremyburge) March 1, 2019

For now, users can go to Facebook > Settings > Privacy > Change phone number look up to "friends".

Burge also said, "Facebook 2FA numbers are also shared with Instagram which prompts you 'is this your phone number?' once you add to FB."

The latest report comes after Facebook admitted that it had been using the phone numbers for targeted advertisements. It's worth noting that Facebook consistently prompts users' to enable two-factor authentication to keep accounts safe. Last year, the company apologised for sending non-security related SMSes to users who had signed up for two-factor authentication security feature.