Hide Your Phone Number (and Other Personal Information)

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With all the rumor based posts in my newsfeeds warning me to not use scripts because I'll lose all of my Facebook and Mafia Wars Accounts, I was happy to see a useful post.  Belinda Singers post let me and others know that there is a phone book in my Facebook account and anyone who has not adjusted their privacy settings will have their phone number listed for all their "mafia friends" to see.  I use the term mafia friends loosely because we all know that many of our Facebook friends are not playing Mafia Wars and are busy trying to spam, phish and even hack our accounts.  To see this for yourself, go to your Home Page, click on "Account" then click "Edit Friends".  On the left side of your home page you will see a option to click on "Phonebook".  Click this and all your friends will appear with their phone numbers in a column next to their name.  Those who have properly adjusted their privacy settings will have there name with a blank space instead of a phone number.  I was shocked that the majority of my friends had phone numbers listed.

To adjust your privacy settings and remove the visibility of your phone number to your friends, follow the pathway below.  I will focus on the phone number options but it is also a good idea to apply these instructions and keep your e-mail and birthday private.  All a good hacker needs to gain access to your account is your e-mail, date of birth, and password.  While you're doing this, you might as well make sure your password isn't easy to figure out.  Use a combination of letters, numbers, capitals, and underscores so hackers will have a hard time figuring out. Click on Account-->Privacy Settings-->Customize Settings (located towards the bottom of the scree-->Scroll down and find mobile phone and other phone-->Click on the box-->Choose Customize--Under "Make this visible to", click the arrow and change to "Only Me"-->Click save and you're done.