PSA: Stop sharing your phone’s address book with apps that ask for it
Whether posting a headshot on your LinkedIn profile or uploading a photo to your favorite social media platform, you want to look your best. Anybody can use a camera, but it takes some practice to take a good shot. Tap or click here for five simple tricks to look better in family photos and selfies.
It’s a given that you’re giving up a degree of privacy when using social media. You’re putting your name and photos out there for anyone to see, not to mention any personal information you include in your profile and comments. And your clicks and likes are all being tracked.
When you create an account with Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, you’re asked if you’d like to sync your contacts to find friends, family and business associates more easily. Here’s why you should stop doing that right now, brought to you by our sponsor, TotalAV.
Connecting with people on social media
How do you find the people you want to connect with on social media? You can search for their names or add them through mutual friends. But the easiest way is to share your contacts from your phone and let the platform find them for you.
It seems like a good idea, right? What’s the harm?
You’re giving more than just their names when you upload your contacts. You’re sharing the information you have on them with the social network, which can include their email addresses and phone numbers. The platform probably already has this information for those on social media. But it might not!
Even worse, your contacts who don’t use social media now have their information exposed. On top of all that, social networks use this information to target them with ads and suggestions.
You can stop sharing contacts to prevent your future phone book entries from being revealed. You can also delete previously uploaded contacts. We’ll show you how to do it all.
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Stop sharing contacts with Facebook
Facebook continuously uploads your contacts from each device where you’re using the app. You’ll have to repeat the following steps for each device. Here’s how: