To all my Facebook friends who have been having minor panic attacks over their phone numbers being published online: it’s been like this for a long time now!

Remember back in the stone ages when Facebook first began incorporating text messaging status updates? Remember when they politely asked for your phone number? If you decided to give it up you shouldn’t be shocked right now.  Rest assured, the look and feel of the list page is new.

I have an Android phone that I purchased a little over six months ago.  One of coolest features (I thought) was that it pulled phone numbers from all of my Facebook contacts.  There was a little address book I could flip through and everything. This has been quite useful, trust me!

Please don’t listen to the “This is true! ALL THE PHONE NUMBERS of ur contacts…” post on Facebook.  According to Slash Gear, you’ll actually remove the contacts you’ve imported with your mobile device and a bunch of other bad stuff.  And I quote Slash Gear again:

In summation: the numbers come from the users who have entered them themselves. No Facebook user that you didn’t allow the ability to see your number has access to your number. Keep yourself the safest by not entering the information you want kept secret by not posting it on the internet in the first place.

My Advice

Don’t publish or write ANYTHING on the Internet that you don’t mind being 100% public.  Even if your profile is “private” don’t trust that your information is 100% secure.  One of your Facebook friends could always leave their account signed in and walk away.  I experienced this first hand when my husband passed away.  I wrote heartfelt status updates that I thought were only being shared with my Facebook friends and was burned.  Since then, I always consider my social media ramblings public!

What do you think about the Facebook phone list? Is it an invasion or privacy or not?