Did you know how Facebook is using your phone number?

Facebook has disappointed us yet again, and now each one of us should be removing our phone number from facebook. Why? I will show you today on Dotto Tech,.Steve Dotto here. How the heck are you doing this fine day at Dotto Tech. We make technology easy so you can do more. Now. Today's video, I've kind of rushed together and posted. It's not quite one of our normal videos on how to because it's about a single topic and it's also a single call to action. Here's, here's the back story. Last week we got notification that facebook had been breached and 50 million users data had been compromised and one of the things that we all, all people who are kind of responsible leapt to, uh, to, to deal with that is we all recommended that people visit their security settings and make sure that they enable two factor authentication, which is a great way to help protect your privacy and your security online. And we still recommend that. Uh, but in the light of that, I started getting notifications in, in Youtube comments of people saying, did you hear it?

That facebook was using our phone numbers to sell to us and they were selling our phone numbers to others and there was a lot of different stories, but this one I went, I hadn't actually heard that, but the week before several news organizations had broken the story and now it kind of all bubbled to the surface that facebook is using the phone number that we use for two factor authentication to target us with more effective advertising. I don't know about you, but I find that completely disingenuous and further undermines my trust in facebook and to be perfectly honest, it completely pisses me off here. Facebook is taking advantage of us using a security measure to help protect our privacy and our account and to help prevent them when they have breaches and data from causing irreparable damage across the across the social spectrum and they're good.

They say, oh, but we've got your phone number. Now we know your area code. We know exactly where you live. We know a little bit more about you because we can cross cross references information with other things. We'll advertise to you more effectively than ever. Now it's a win win situation, screw that are right. So I have put together a short little video on how to remove your phone number from facebook because here's the thing, when you go in and you just change as I recommend in the video that I am posting here, which is how to use Google authenticator, which is something that we recommend you do now because instead of allowing facebook to texture you the, a two factor authentication you can use, just use Google authenticator to log in so you can remove your phone number from facebook in that area, in that area to text it to you, uh, but facebook's still retains your phone number deeper, deeper, deeper in their account information.

And this video here shows you how to ferret out your phone number and remove it. So that is a super long preamble on what they. Basically we're moving your phone number, sorry for getting on my high horse, but I feel much better now and I hope you, you will. When you remove your phone number here, let me show you how. Here's what you have to do to absolutely remove your phone number so facebook doesn't use it for any marketing purposes whatsoever. You have to go into your general account settings, go to your information, your facebook information. Once you're there, you go access your information of how many steps do we have to go through and there. It's always a good idea here to go expand all because then you can see all of the different settings. Now here's all of our settings in facebook. Scroll way down till you get to your profile information. Go into your contact information and there you have to remove your phone number completely.

Are you sure? Want to move this phone? Removed the phone for security? You must enter your password. Alright, I'm going to do that. There it is. Submit you removed my damn phone number. All right. I believe that's what you have to do to completely extract yourself from facebook. Having access to our phone number would appear that that's what has to go through to extract ones number, phone number from facebook's clutches. I think we'd be foolish to think that this is gonna. Make a huge difference in how facebook operates, uh, but I think that we should start taking these small stands against facebook wherever possible, against all of the social networks, insisting that they respect our privacy a little bit more. Share this idea with your friends. Share this video with your friends and facebook. Maybe we'll notice that a whole bunch of people are removing their phone numbers and there's a darn good reason for that. It's because they should have paid attention to how they use our phone number before they ever took advantage of the fact that we were sharing it with them. I love reading your comments and suggestions. So please post below. I do read every single one. If you liked this video, please give it a like and share it with your friends or colleagues who may find it useful. Now, make sure you've subscribed and hit that notification bell. And if you have time, check out some of our other videos right over there. Until next time, I'm Steve Dotto. Have Fun. Storming the castle.