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Comment by zenincognito | Hacker News Reader

This is gross violation of user privacy but if you file a bug with FB they will say - "won't fix" ; is working as intended.

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Have they said that? They've previously removed the ability to search for users by phone number, so they recognise the problem.

I can see why someone would have unthinkingly added the profile picture to the recovery screen, but since the downside of resetting the wrong account is so low (an SMS that can be ignored by the rightful user), it seems easily fixable.

A guy called Brian had his personal contact information (including phone number) plastered all over Facebook's promotional pages.

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76hdrj

I don't think Facebook ever actually apologised for doing this.

Facebook profile stuff is public info anyway, I don't really see the privacy issue here.

Phone numbers that are meant for account recovery and/or two-factor security only are most definitely not public info.

This method isn't a way of finding out phone numbers from Facebook accounts, so I don't see what you mean here

Phone number meant to be private shouldn’t be associated with any other info whatsoever.

Whats the rationale behind this? Outside of prank calling, I don't see what the benefit of having a private phone number.

When I hit someone's voice mail I can get their name, so it's not like most people consider it to be private.

>I don't see what the benefit of having a private phone number.

What's the benefit of having a public phone number? You get more advertisements and spam. With a private phone number only people you've given the number to will call you. You can limit who can bother you.

I don't think this is really true, because spammers call numbers at random (or perhaps, in sequence). They are not working through the published phone book.

Then you probably shouldn't be announcing it in your caller ID when you call random people.

Probably not, but does making a person in making one mistake abdicate their right to privacy?

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