Facebook has made clear that it harvests data on people's phone calls and text messages.

But it says that people consented to having that information collected, and that it was only used to "provide you with a better experience across Facebook".

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, many have looked into the data that is being collected by Facebook, which can be done by downloading the company's file on you from its website. As they did so, some users picked through the data and found something shocking: that it contained a long list of the messages they had sent and phone calls they had made, in some cases going back years.

How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Show all 9 1 /9 How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Lock your profile down If you haven’t done this already, do it now. In Settings, hit the Privacy tab. From here, you can control who gets to see your future posts and friends list. Choose from Public, Friends, Only Me and Custom in the dropdown menu. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Limit old posts Annoyingly, changing this has no effect on who’s able to see your past Facebook posts. Instead, on the Privacy page, you have to click on Limit Past Posts, then select Limit Old Posts and finally hit Confirm on the pop-up. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Make yourself harder to find You can stop completely random people from adding you by selecting Friends of Friends from the dropdown menu in the Who can send you friend requests? section of the Privacy page. It’s also worth limiting who can find your Facebook profile with your number and email address. At the bottom of the page is the option to prevent search engines outside of Facebook from linking to your profile. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Control access to your Timeline You can limit who gets to post things on your Timeline and who gets to see posts on your Timeline too. In Settings, go to Timeline and Tagging and edit the sections you want to lock down. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Block people When you block someone, they won’t be able to see things you post on your Timeline, tag you, invite you to events or groups, start conversations with you or add you as a friend. To do it, go to Settings and Blocking. Annoyingly, you have to block people on Messenger separately. You can also add friends to your Restricted list here, which means they’ll still be friends with you but will only be able to see your public posts and things you share on a mutual friend's Timeline. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Review tags One of Facebook’s handiest privacy features is the ability to review posts you’re tagged in before they appear on your Timeline. They’ll still be visible on the News Feed while they’re fresh, but won’t be tied to your profile forever. In Timeline and Tagging, enable Timeline review controls. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Clean up your apps You can view a list of all of the apps you’ve connected to your Facebook account by going to Settings and Apps. The list might be longer than you expected it to be. It’s worth tidying this up to ensure things you no longer use lose access to your personal information. If you don’t want to log into websites and apps with your facebook account, scroll down and turn Platform off. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Change your ad preferences You can view a list of everything Facebook thinks you’re into and tinker with your ad preferences by going to Settings and Adverts. A lot more information is displayed on the desktop site than the app, so we’d recommend doing this on a computer. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Download your data Facebook lets you download all of the data it has on you, including the posts you’ve shared, your messages and photos, ads you’ve clicked on and even the IP addresses that are logged when you log in or out of the site. It’s a hell of a lot of information, which you should download to ensure you never over-share on the social network again.

Facebook has now confirmed that the data is being collected. But it has disputed much of the reporting and says that the feature isn't being used for spying, only to learn more about its users.

The company called its response to the allegations a "fact check". It suggested they were wrong in a number of ways.

"You may have seen some recent reports that Facebook has been logging people’s call and SMS (text) history without their permission," the response read. "This is not the case."

It then went on to detail how people had given their consent to the collection. It shared a screenshot of the page where people gave their permission – clicking through on a button that made clear their data would be "continuously uploaded".

The feature can be turned off in settings, and people will still be able to use the app as before. Users can also keep contact uploading – which allows Messenger to know who you might want to chat to – while getting rid of the collection of phone calls and text messages histories, from the same page.

It also attempted to address a number of other things it claimed had been inaccurately reported. The data won't be sold and what is actually said inside of a call or a text message will not be collected by Facebook, it said.