How to remove personal contact details from your social media profiles

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Secure ConfigMedium priority

About 30 minutes to complete

Review every social media profile and remove any personal information you do not need to share publicly: phone number, home address, birthday, and workplace. This information is routinely harvested for use in targeted scams and identity theft.

Step-by-step guide

Log in to each social media account: Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and any others you use regularly.
Go to Edit Profile or Account Information on each platform.
Remove your phone number from your profile. It should not be visible to anyone, even Friends, unless you have a specific reason to share it.
Remove or hide your home city, specific address, and birthday, especially the year of birth.
On LinkedIn, consider whether your employer, job title, and work history need to be as specific as they currently are. This information is particularly useful for business email compromise attacks targeting your company.

5 steps

Why this matters

Personal information visible on social media profiles, such as your phone number, home address, birthday, and workplace, is routinely harvested by scammers to make phishing calls and messages more convincing. Information shared across multiple platforms can be combined to build a complete profile that enables identity theft and targeted fraud.

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