Not on Facebook? News flash: Facebook still knows about you

A great read from Kashmir Hill at Gizmodo about how Facebook doesn’t keep profiles for non-users, but it does use their contact information to connect people:

What if you don’t like Facebook having this data about you? All you need to do is find every person who’s ever gotten your contact information and uploaded it to Facebook, and then ask them one by one to go to Facebook’s contact management page and delete it.

Bad news folks. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never even created an account on Facebook, it still knows about you. And there’s next to nothing you can do about it.

At the very least, if you must have a Facebook account don’t ever grant it access to your address book and contacts, and use a unique email address (rather than your regular one) when you create an account.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.