this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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Well that's not terrifying at all.
Our names, numbers, and home addresses used to be in a book delivered to everyone's door or found stacked in a phone booth on the street. That was normal for generations.
It's funny how much fuckwits can change the course of society and how we can't have nice things.
Right, but when everyone got phone books, those were only shared locally in the town. It would be pretty hard to figure out someones phone number from across the state/country without the internet unless you knew someone in the town.
You could also pay to be unlisted, which is a luxury long since gone. How cool would it be to make your data 'unlisted' by paying a small monthly fee.
Proton estimates the average Americans data is worth $700 per year.
Sign me up for $1000/year privacy fee and you will make more money by doing absolutely nothing.
It would be even cooler if we had a right to privacy
No doubt, lucky us, we get neither...
Phone books from outside my region were available at the library; that place where they store a consolidated collection of books for just anyone to sign out and use.
I once used one to look up my friend from summer camp. He lived in New York City and I didn't live anywhere close
Library had a bunch of NYC phonebooks
I don't remember that, however it doesn't surprise me at least for a radius around your area. I'd be surprised if they had all of them from all the states
You could just have them borrow one from whatever other library had it. Hell, you could just call the phone company and order the one you want yourself. Fuck, you could just call 411 and have them look it up for you right then.
Still are. I got a phone book delivered a week ago, I shit thee not. Granted I'm on a small island and the book is small too. But like, you can pay to have your number removed from the book. Can you have it removed from this? Not to mention all the 2FA stuff that can be connected to the phone number. Someone clones your number or takes it and suddenly they've got access to a whole lot of your login stuff.
Pay to have it removed! That sounds like blackmail doxing.
My phone book is smaller than a novel and only has yellow pages these days.