Not on Facebook anymore? Well, maybe you used to be on the social network but deleted your account long ago. Heck, maybe you never joined Facebook at all and never even gave Mark Zuckerberg your phone number or email.
Guess what? Facebook very likely has your contact information anyway! But don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. Facebook’s parent company Meta actually has a « secret tool, » first noticed by Business Insider, which lets you request the deletion of personal data, like your phone number or email address.
And when we say secret, we do mean secret. It’s hidden deep within Facebook’s Help pages, buried beneath hundreds of words in an article titled « Information for people who don’t use Meta products. »
« Click here if you have a question about the rights you may have, » reads the sentence where the tool is linked.
Once you click the link, you will be taken to the contact removal tool.
If you were wondering how Facebook got your contacts to begin with, it’s explained right on the page. Meta products like Facebook and Instagram ask users to upload their phone’s contact information in order to connect them with friends and family who are already on those platforms. By doing this, Meta then accesses and stores all of those phone numbers and email addresses. With billions of users around the world, there’s a good chance you are on someone’s contact list and they likely provided your info to Facebook unwittingly.
Now, you can get it removed.
1. Choose the contact info you’d like to delete
The tool provides three options to search for: a mobile number, a landline number, and an email address.
2. Enter the contact information and choose the platform to search
After you choose one, just enter the phone number or email address, and pick which platform you’d like Meta to search for it on: Facebook and Messenger, or Instagram.
3. Enter your confirmation code
Once you enter your information, Meta will send a confirmation code to the phone number or email contact that you input to make sure it’s your contact information and not someone else’s.
4. Confirm deletion request
After entering the code, Meta will ask you to click « confirm » if you want the info removed and blocked from ever being added again. Select this and that’s it! You’ll see a message saying your request was successful. When you search for the same contact information in the tool again, Meta should tell you that it couldn’t be found.
As Business Insider points out, this is just a drop in the bucket when it comes to the data that Facebook has on you. But if you’re not even a Facebook user, your phone number and email address is probably still a big part of that data. And even if you’re not worried about Meta having your information, know that the company often shares it with third parties, too.
If you want to make sure companies like Meta have as little data on you as possible, take five minutes to request your contact info be removed.
