this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
125 points (89.3% liked)
Technology
74296 readers
4374 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Did you know that before cellular phones were a thing, the phone company regularly sent out books with everyone's name, phone number, and sometimes even their address in them?
You could even find such a book in public in these little things called "Phone booths".
You've missed the point. The phone numbers are not the valuable information. What's valuable is the list of each person's social contacts.
You've missed the point.
The point is the useful trivia I just told you.
To really drive in your point, why don't you post the names and phone numbers of the three people you contact most frequently. Don't worry, those numbers are already in the phone book. It's ok, you're just sharing publicly available information.
And people were concerned. My grandpa only had initials published not his full name because he knew some widows [when my mom was a baby] afraid of crime who only published their initials and wanted to make things harder for those criminals who targeted on widows.