Facebook has been a very useful tool for connecting people. It is not bad as it is, but sharing too much information such as your phone number can do more harm than good. For those who don't want to reveal too much personal information, there are ways through which personal information can be hidden from the public. However, there is a very good reason why one must delete his or her phone number off of Facebook.
If you had used your mobile to post those food pics or selfies, then you should worry that you might have already shared your phone number somehow. By default, people can search for you using your phone number once it is already in your profile. Many are not aware that they are "broadcasting" such information in this way.
Reza Moaiandin, a software engineer, has demonstrated how he could come up with people's identities, including pictures and names, just by using a randomly generated mobile number.
Moaiandin tells Metro.co the leaky information is like "walking into a bank, asking for a a few thousand customers' personal information based on their account numbers and the bank telling you, "Here are their details".
On the other hand, according to Facebook, "The privacy of people who use Facebook is extremely important to us. We have industry-leading proprietary network monitoring tools constantly running in order to ensure data security and have strict rules that govern how developers are able to use our APIs to build their products. Developers are only able to access information that people have chosen to make public."
'Everyone who uses Facebook has control of the information they share, this includes the information people include within their profile, and who can see this information. Our Privacy Basics tool has a series of helpful guides that explain how people can quickly and easily decide what information they share and who they share it with.'
So for those who only want to show such information to their closest of friends, they can go to the Who Can Search For Me section on Facebook. But then again, your close friends and those who need to know your phone number most probably has that information already so there is really no need to put it on Facebook. Unless you want people to find you with those combination of digits then it would be better to delete it off of social media profiles.
