[NewsPoster]

Facebook is making it easier for potential users of its Messenger app to sign up, by removing the requirement to have a Facebook account beforehand. Starting with Canada, the United States, Peru, and Venezuela, the app will allow anyone to sign up without having an existing account with the social network, with a new signup process requiring a user to set themselves up using their phone number, name, and a photograph for the profile.

Those signing up without a full Facebook account will be able to send photographs to other users, take part in group chats, perform voice and video calling, and other functions, as well as the main messaging aspect of the service. People with full Facebook accounts will still get the better service, with the ability to manage their Facebook friends and contacts more easily, as well as taking advantage of multi-device messaging, something that cannot be accomplished with a phone number-based authentication system.

The new addition to Messenger should help it increase its user count, up from its current 700 million monthly users. By losing the need for a Facebook account, it makes Messenger much more attractive to people who don't want to create a full account, be it through a lack of time or being wary about privacy on the social network.

[just a poster]

"phone number, name, and a photograph"

That's all they need to track you.

As phone number identity verification gets easier to circumvent, fb may switch to driver license, social security number, or perhaps, when fb get desperate enough, even financial identity like a credit card number.

[Charles Martin]

Well of course they are going to track you. That is **what they do** and **why Facebook exists.** It is a service designed to collect information on users to sell to advertisers. That's it. That is its raison d'etre.

See also Google, Twitter, et cetera. If the service is free, then you are usually the product.