In April 2021, a large data set of over 500 million Facebook users was made freely available for download.
Encompassing approximately 20% of Facebook’s subscribers, the data was allegedly obtained by exploiting a vulnerability Facebook advises they rectified in August 2019. The primary value of the data is the association of phone numbers to identities; whilst each record included phone, only 2.5 million contained an email address. Most records contained names and genders with many also including dates of birth, location, relationship status and employer.
This is not the only hefty data breach in recent months, there have been dozens more, but due to the brand in question, this one hits the major news outlets….
The obvious solution, is to never hand over your Phone Number to third parties in the first place – in reality your personal Phone Number should only be for family and closest friends – it is your personal number and should remain private wherever possible!
However, almost every web site and social platform you register with these days requests a phone number from which they can verify that you´re a real person.
So what you need is a way of giving these platforms an alternate phone number and a way of receiving the SMS verification code that is sent to that number, all the time keeping your personal phone number private.
Enter www.ConXhub.com and their amazing SMS2Email service. For less than a cup of coffee a month, you can have a brand new REAL mobile phone number, linked to your existing mobile and the ability to receive SMS´s straight to the email address of your choice.
You have to keep your mobile number live almost 24/7, but rather than you getting hit with spam calls and messages you get to control your alternate number and decide when and how to receive them. Super safe, super efficient and highly versatile.
So now, instead of pushing out your personal mobile number to the four corners of the world, you can keep it private and use alternate numbers for all the other parts of your life.