Facebook appears to have silently rolled out a tool that allows users to remove their contact information, such as phone numbers and email addresses, uploaded by others.
The existence of the tool, which is buried inside a Help Centre page about “Friending,” was first reported by Business Insider last week. It’s offered as a way for “Non-users” to “exercise their rights under applicable laws.”
An Internet Archive search via the Wayback Machine shows that the option has been available since at least May 29, 2022.
When users sync the contact lists on their devices with Facebook (or any other service), it’s worth pointing out the privacy violation, which stems from the fact that those contacts didn’t explicitly consent to the upload.
“Someone may have uploaded their address book to Facebook, Messenger, or Instagram with your contact information in it,” Facebook notes in the page. “You can ask us to confirm whether we have your phone number or email address.”
images from Hacker News
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