Millions told to check Facebook immediately – even if you don’t have an account

FACEBOOK may have your phone number and email address even if you’ve never signed up to the social network.

Anyone who has your contact details and has uploaded their phone address book to the platform may not realise they’ve basically handed the data to Facebook owner Meta.

Facebook might have your number even if you've never used the site — Facebook might have your number even if you’ve never used the site

This includes the company’s other apps Instagram and Messenger.

Understandably, some people may be uncomfortable with the tech giant keeping hold of their details.

Fortunately, Facebook has a secret tool that allows you to request that your phone numbers or email address be removed.

“Someone may have uploaded their address book to Facebook, Messenger or Instagram with your contact information in it,” Facebook says.

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“You can ask us to confirm whether we have your phone number or email address.

“If we do, you can request that we delete it from our address book database.

“To prevent it from being uploaded to this database again through someone’s address book, we need to keep a copy in our block list.”

Annoyingly, you can only make a request for one bit of data at a time.

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So you can’t ask for your mobile, landline and email address to be wiped all at once.

You’ll have to make each request separately.

How to remove my number from Facebook

You can submit your request now by visiting facebook.com/contacts/removal.

Select the type of data you want removed – remember, you can only make one request at a time.

If you’ve gone for a phone number, be sure to change the area code to the right country.

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You should then select where you want Facebook to fish out your personal information.

It’s probably easier to just tick both to be on the safe side.

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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk