Facebook has a tool that allows people to delete their personal contact information — even if they never shared it.
Any friend who has shared their address book with Facebook to find other friends also shared additional details.
The feature has been available since late May.
According to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, it is linked in help center articles — including in Facebook’s help section for non-users — as well as in the privacy policy and the landing pages for Facebook and Instagram.
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The link reads: “Click here if you have a question about the rights you may have.”
The contact-blocking tool allows people to search for mobile phone numbers, landlines and email addresses.
In this photo illustration, the app icons of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus VR are displayed on a smartphone screen with a Meta logo in the background.
((Photo Illustration by Onur Dogman/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images))
“Someone may have uploaded their address book to Facebook, Messenger or Instagram with your contact information in it,” the page reads. “You can ask us to confirm whether we have your phone number or email address. If we do, you can request that we delete it from our address book database.”
To prevent that information from being uploaded to the database again through someone’s address book, the platform says a copy is necessary for its block list.
The Facebook tool allows users and non-users to look up personal contact information
(Facebook)
“If you’d like us to delete and block more than one type of contact information, we need to confirm each separately,” Facebook noted.
Meta told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that the block list was for internal reference and would ensure the information is not uploaded multiple times.
Once a type of information is selected, users are required to select where the information may have been uploaded: Facebook, Messenger or Instagram.
After entering a confirmation code — sent either via email or a text message — it scans for data.
The feature sends a verification email or message before completing the search
(Facebook)
Hit “confirm” to successfully block the information.
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If it does not appear, then it will ask users to try additional numbers and addresses.
