Facebook Messenger asks you to sync your phone contacts while you install it for the first time. If you allow it to do so then all your contacts information is shared with Facebook as well as Messenger. Such information helps Facebook to serve you better by providing relevant suggestions. However, if you are not fine with sharing contacts with Facebook then you can unsync or delete all the already synced contacts and also stop it from syncing them automatically later. Here’s how to turn off continuous contacts syncing in Facebook Messenger from Android and iPhone.
To see the contacts you’ve shared with Messenger you can visit this link. Of course, you should be logged in to your account to see this information. If you’ve synced your contacts with Facebook then all of them will be listed on this page. In case you don’t see anything then contacts sync is disabled for your account.
You can delete your contacts from Facebook by clicking on Delete All Contacts and confirming it on the next pop-up. However, if you don’t turn off syncing from Messenger then the contacts will be imported again to Facebook automatically. To prevent that follow the steps below.
Unsync Contacts From Messenger On iPhone & Android
1. Open Messenger app on your phone and tap on your profile picture which can be found at the top left on iPhone and top right on Android while you’re on the Home tab.
2. Next, tap on People on the next screen.
3. Under People, toggle Sync Contacts switch to Off.
4. Finally, select Stop Syncing and tap on Remove to delete already synced contacts and stop continuous syncing.
With this, contacts syncing will be disabled and your contacts won’t be shared with Facebook anymore. It may take some time before your already synced contacts are deleted automatically (in my case it took a couple of minutes) or you can visit the link I shared earlier in the article to delete them manually if you don’t want to wait.
You can even confirm the contacts removal from Facebook by visiting the same link above.
It is possible to sync phone contacts again later if you change your mind. In order to do that you can follow the same method but toggle Sync Contacts switch to On in step 3 above.
Also Read: How to Sync Facebook Profile Pictures with Contacts on iPhone and Android
Are you going to keep your contacts synced or turn off continuous syncing in Messenger? Share your thoughts in the comments below.