Facebook used phone numbers from two-factor authentication to target users with ads

It's pretty rare for Facebook to ever be in the news for a good reason, and this time it's because the social media/data harvesting company has confessed to using user phone numbers to target people with advertisements. Normally not a huge deal, but in this instance they were using numbers from 2FA systems to send out ads. Yikes.

Essentially, Facebook prompts users to set up 2FA authentication on their accounts to make them more secure. After attempting to sign in, the user would have to also respond on a second device, usually with SMS, to confirm that they really were the ones trying to log in. Pretty standard stuff, honestly.

But that SMS authentication is where things get sketchy, because most users aren't signing up for extra security to be bombarded with even more advertisements. That's a pretty gross way to break trust with your users, but hey, it's Facebook. I don't know what anyone else expected.

If you want to, you can opt out of this on your Facebook account and use other methods besides SMS. That's probably going to be a good idea, but if you're still hanging on to Facebook your privacy is still going to be violated in some other way, anyway. Can't win for losing.

source: Tech Crunch

---

Born in southern Alabama, Jared spends his working time selling phones and his spare time writing about them. The Android enthusiasm started with the original Motorola Droid, but the tech enthusiasm currently covers just about everything. He likes PC gaming, Lenovo's Moto Z line, and a good productivity app.

---

#Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews