Facebook Messenger removes feature to search contacts via phone number

Ethical hacker Jane Manchun Wong writes on Twitter that Facebook is no longer offering the ability to find someone by entering their phone number in Facebook Messenger. Dutch tech site Tweakers assumes Facebook removed the functionality to prevent brute force attacks. Recently, Twitter hit the news as a security researcher was able to retrieve the phone number of various celebrities and politicians. Security researcher Ibrahim Balic used a list of two billion randomly generated phone numbers, which resulted in 17 million hits.

Possibly, Facebook wants to prevent people from performing a similar attack on its platform.

Facebook Messenger is removing the ability to find someone by entering their phone number pic.twitter.com/NzvtpsSun7

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) 28 december 2019