Verify Mobile Numbers Using Facebook

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facebook-phone

Mobile phone numbers and personal email addresses both uniquely identify people. If we can locate social profiles tied to a mobile number or email address, that would serve as verification of this data; we can also get additional information, helping us to decide whether to try to connect with the person regarding a job opening or a business deal.

Many sourcers know that if we have an email address, we can identify the individual’s profile on LinkedIn using Rapportive. We can also determine the person’s Google-Plus and Facebook profiles by just pasting the email address into the search bar:

suzyfb

Few people know that it’s also possible to identify a Facebook profile by entering a mobile phone number. As you can see from these screenshots, Facebook “understands” a variety of phone number formats.

phone-facebook

(Note that this won’t work with landline phone numbers – those that don’t accept texting – because of the Facebook verification rules for an associated phone number).

For this verification to work, you must be logged into Facebook. For hackers out there, I’d recommend not to try to run long blocks of sequential numbers; Facebook would likely stop that activity pretty soon.

When we are logged out of Facebook, there’s still a way to find out if a phone number is registered with some account. Start by using the “Find your account” feature:

findacc

For a mobile number not on Facebook, we’ll be clearly notified: “No Search Results. Your search did not return any results. Please try again with other information.”

For a number that is registered, we would get something like this:

fb-account

In some cases, Facebook will show the name and the image; in other, it will not.

(Feel free to use these “hacks”, but please don’t make people worry by triggering password reset requests, OK?)

Join me for a new webinar to learn everything about Sourcing on Facebook (and Twitter) – only one day left to register!

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