OMG WHAT

[arethinn]

Your phone number may have been made public (to some degree) on Facebook without your knowledge or consent (possibly related to friends searching for you with a certain app - if they had your number, it got attched to your profile, kind of thing; it "imported" from them without them intending to do so, by the sound of it). If you have a look at http://www.facebook.com/friends/?filter=pfp you can see phone numbers of certain of your friends - who may or may not have wanted you to know them! See http://www.facebook.com/contact_importer/remove_uploads.php to "unimport" anything that might have been harvested from you. See also the disclaimer on the phonebook page; you need to disable it on the phone too (have no idea how to do this since I don't have one).

Comments

[nytemuse]

You only need to disable it on your phone if you've used/linked a phone # to FB before. And that's only if you've added someone to FB via your phone. While I do use my phone to post, I haven't to do anything else, so it hasn't imported from my contacts (esp given that my contacts' #s did not show up when I checked my FB phonebook (well, there were 2 who synced, but that could have been someone else's import, as several others did not) ;)

[arethinn]

People showed up in my phonebook and I don't even have a phone. I can only guess they must have imported from someone else's contacts - but that's the problem. I shouldn't be seeing them just because we both happen to have the third party friended.

[nytemuse]

As I understand it, the people who show up in your phonebook are ANYONE on your friends list who has a phone # imported. So if a friend of theirs (who is not necessarily a friend of yours) did an add from their phone or allowed for phone# import, it would show up if you had them friended.
IE if you and had Kai friended and Radar somehow did an add/import thingy so Kai's # went into FB, Kai would show up in your phonebook even if you didn't have Radar friended.

[arethinn]

As I understand it, the people who show up in your phonebook are ANYONE on your friends list who has a phone # imported. So if a friend of theirs (who is not necessarily a friend of yours) did an add from their phone or allowed for phone# import, it would show up if you had them friended.

I know, and this sounds totally wrong to me. This sort of information shouldn't be getting revealed just because of (essentially) chance.

[nytemuse]

Agreed, but then, I'm not surprised...Yahoo and Facebook have a history for that sort of data stuff.

[elven-ranger.livejournal.com]

Luckily my Facebook never had my phone number on any aspect of it in the first place.

[enotsola]

The point here is that you don't need to have ever put it anywhere. If one of your friends let the iphone app search their contacts for their friends, and it found one that matched you, it looks like they harvested your number and tied it to your account. At least, that is what reports are saying.

[elven-ranger.livejournal.com]

ugh!