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Surprise: Facebook let advertisers have your phone number

Surprise: Facebook let advertisers have your phone number
Ben Bowman

Ben Bowman

  • Updated:
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Did you trust Facebook with your phone number? That might not have been the smartest move.

The Federal Trade Commission is about to file a complaint that suggests Facebook misled its users about how their phone numbers would be handled.

You may have uploaded your phone number as part of two-factor authentication. But the FTC says advertisers used those numbers to target you without your knowledge.

The feds are also attacking Facebook for not clearly explaining that users could turn off a facial recognition tool often used for tagging photos. Allegedly, 30 million users were left in the dark about that setting.

This news comes as the government ripped Facebook with a $5 billion fine, although reports say the original fine was supposed to be much higher.

So will Facebook ever learn or are we doomed to report these constant data leaks every single day?

According to the Washington Post, Facebook is agreeing to “submit to unprecedented federal oversight of its business practices, including the creation of a special committee on its board of directors that regularly certifies the tech giant is handling user data appropriately.”

Somehow, we think this isn’t the end of Facebook’s privacy scandals…

Ben Bowman

Ben Bowman

Ben Bowman is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who led Softonic.com's editorial team in 2018 and 2019. Before joining Softonic, he was the Head of Content for Curiosity.com and a news producer for NBC, Fox, and CBS. He is an award-winning filmmaker and director of sketch and improv comedy, and a contributing writer for the Pitch comedy app.

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