Think twice before putting your phone number on Facebook.

Have you ever gave Facebook  your phone number for ‘security reasons’ or  simply to have it show up for people on your profile? Well you may think that this information is protected, but a British software engineer has now proved that it most certainly is not.

A lot of my friends have their phone numbers on Facebook and I often wonder if I’m the only one who doesn’t want to?

Reza Moaiandin did a test using code to prove just how vulnerable our data really is. By typing in random phone numbers he was able to find out names, pictures and locations which is obviously a huge invasion of privacy.

He then sent the millions of phone numbers from the UK, US and Canada to a Facebook app-building program. He was then given millions of unobstructed personal profiles.

This loophole means that billions of us are now wide open to cyber hacks and although the loophole warning was issued back in February, it still remains un fixed.

Facebook told the Daily Mail: ‘The privacy of people who use Facebook is extremely important to us. We have industry-leading proprietary network monitoring tools constantly running in order to ensure data security and have strict rules that govern how developers are able to use our APIs to build their products. Developers are only able to access information that people have chosen to make public.‘

Facebook has always been honest about freely sharing data so if you wouldn’t want your data sold on to other companies I would refrain from entering your details!

CLICK HERE to find out why eBayers should beware.