Is Facebook Releasing Your Phone Number To Advertisers?

Actually from what I am reading, "Premium Advertisers" with Facebook are going to be granted access to your Phone Number and Email Addresses.  This is planned to happen by way of a program called Power Editor.  Pay them money and FB is giving access to your supposedly private information.

How do you combat this?

Dropping off of Facebook won't stop that, the information will still be there.
Deleting your account may but will they actually delete the information?

What I did was to mess with the information.

Go into what I call the Steaming Pile of Slop called Timeline.

(Who on earth thought two columns was a good way to portray variable information should be horsewhipped with a book of Fonts and the Chicago Book Of Style.)

Find the button that says "Update Info".

Page down until you find "Contact Info" and click on the Edit Button.

Change your phone number to Your Area Code 555-1212.  Such as 609-555-1212.  That will put you in contact with the information.  You know '411'?

Click on the button on the right with a down pointing triangle.  That is where you control who can see the information.  Change it to Only Me.

I did this to my email accounts too.  They don't need all that either.

At this point the article that I saw on Gizmodo says it will be granted your name and phone number as well as your email.  Any advertiser who calls me will get a lecture to put it mildly.

No matter whether this program becomes real or if it is a rumor, now is a good time for you to go in to your settings and see if you really do want to be sharing something.  My personal opinion is that if you want to know something about me, ask.  I may actually tell you.

Of course the safest way to protect your privacy is to simply not put it online.  I'd say if you're on Facebook, that ship had sailed a long time ago.