Facebook: Disable Contacts Sync

For some time now, Facebook has been offering you an additional gadget that is supposed to make using the social media platform more pleasant. In doing so, Messenger automatically synchronizes your smartphone's contacts with Facebook. If you don't want that, you can simply disable this setting.

How to disable the feature

Syncing with your smartphone contacts creates connections on Facebook that you may not want. Therefore, you should disable the function.

1. Open Facebook Messenger on your smartphone and select your profile picture.
2. You will now see an overview of the settings you can make for this app.
3. Click on the "Synchronize contacts" button. Since this function is set in advance, the synchronization is disabled.
4. The app will now ask you if you really want to stop the synchronization. You must confirm this process.
5. Close the app and start it again. Facebook will now no longer synchronize with your contacts.

The problem with Facebook

Since Facebook launched Messenger, you can officially communicate only through the app. This is because messages can only be sent through Messenger. However, Facebook does not explicitly tell you that Messenger automatically syncs with your contacts. This gives people access to your profile, and thus to your publicly accessible data, with whom you have no corresponding relationship.