Norton is famous for its privacy and security protection, and yesterday, it released a new version of its latest Android security app. The upgrade contains Norton’s new Mobile Insight technology, which analyzes Android apps to see where the major security breaches are coming from.

Within a few hours of the update being published, Norton discovered something very interesting but not hugely surprising: one of the main applications that has proven to be a security threat on the Android OS is Facebook.

Everyone’s always been pretty much aware that Facebook isn’t exactly delicate with user data, but Norton Mobile Security found something even more alarming than a not-so-great privacy policy in the apps source code. The Facebook application actually leaks your phone number, regardless of whether or not you’ve put it anywhere in the app or on your Facebook account.

As soon as you start the application, the phone number registered to the device you’re using is automatically sent to Facebook’s servers and the most horrifying thing is, the app doesn’t need your permission to do so. This still happens even if you don’t actually have a Facebook account, the second you run the application your number is automatically sent off.

Norton has informed the public that Facebook has been made aware of this issue and is working around the clock to fix the vulnerability, which should be pushed out in its next application’s update. The social networking giant has also deleted the numbers from its servers, therefore preventing a malicious security breach.

• SourceSymantec