A recent research by Indian security researcher Suriya Prakash, has revealed that majority of phone numbers of users are not safe on Facebook. The security researcher has claimed that around 83.3 percent of Facebook users are vulnerable. Facebook has also confirmed about the exploit by the researcher and said that it has limited the brute force search attack.

The attack is possible because Facebook doesn’t limits phone number searches (after the media exposure, Facebook has limited the searches) that can be performed by a user via the mobile version of its website. In fact, any malicious user can abuse Facebook’s phone search with brute force search attack, to find people’s numbers and along with the name of the person associated with the phone number.

What’s more concerning is the exploit works even if a person has set his phone number private. The reason for this, in Facebook, if you want to completely hide your phone number, you are required to also change your Privacy Settings. More details about how to protect your phone number on Facebook after the break. [Read more...]