Maybe- they obviously still keep the records and you can find the listings online and you might be able to request a printed copy but Verizon hasn’t delivered printed phone books ( white and yellow pages ) to everyone in NY for 10 or 15 years.
It was always only land lines. What an insane amount of paper used every year in retrospect. And you could punch three numbers into a phone and give a name and a city and get their phone number and physical address. Even back then I’d have them leave my address off.
Pretty sure I got one from Frontier within the last couple of years; but can’t lay my hands on it now. Maybe it’s been longer than I thought.
Land lines were effectively all that there were. Very rich people might have a car phone; but that was quite rare.
Yes of course. I was speaking to later years when there was a lot of overlap.
Could be- I believe each individual provider had to request permission form the Public Service Commission to stop distribution so that Verizon getting permission wouldn’t have affected Frontier.
The last couple that I got went straight into the recycling but it’s been many years
It was the name of the account holder, which may or may not have been the names of the person in whose home the phone was located. Or the names of everyone else in the home who used that phone.
Nor were you compelled to use your full legal name - it was very common for their to be initials and then a surname in the listing.
When I was in college it was quite common for female students to have their phone account either with just their initials and surname, or in their father’s name as a safety measure - it made it harder for creepy men to stalk them. Not everyone did this, but some did. (I opted for initial + surname for my first apartment)
So some privacy was possible even without paying extra for an unlisted number.
That continues today - my current phone is still in my late spouse’s name. Mainly because the phone company wouldn’t let me change the name on the account without a lot of bullshit.
I use them for the bottom of my parrot’s cage - since the disappearance of newspapers I’ve been scavenging junk mail of various sorts for that purpose.
Agreed.
I use my real name on Twitter/X, which may not be the best idea, though I largely avoid posting responses on toxic accounts that attract toxic people, thus limiting interactions with aggrieved loons (this precaution seems to be paying off in that I no longer find myself on hit “lists” set up and posted on nutbar accounts*).
Given the amount of doxing that affects even anonymous accounts, not using your real name doesn’t afford that much protection.;
*it’s easy to delete your name from these lists by the simple expedient of blocking the list creator, though with Musk in charge this option may not last.
A Canadian magician and YouTuber named Wes Barker a few years ago revealed how he performed a trick that fooled Penn and Teller, on their TV show Fool Us. The trick involved picking a random name from a phonebook, then tearing it to pieces, flinging those pieces into the air, and finally stabbing a sword into them and magically impaling the precise bit of paper with the name. Barker said he was revealing the trick because he can no longer perform it - he can’t get hold of a phonebook.
There is a forum called math overflow where I use my real name to establish my bona fides. I don’t here, obviously, but I have posted enough personal information that anyone who cared could easily find me. But then I am not concerned with being doxxed.
My daughter set up a profile on Linked In.
Within DAYS, she was receiving messages from men.
She reported them all, of course, but who the hell thinks that is appropriate.
I would not voluntarily publish my name on this or any forum. There are just too many people who might, at the flip of a switch, decide that Action Needed To Be Taken. Not that a bad actor might not be able to track me down, but I’m not going to make it easy.
Does having a non-public name allow some people to behave in ways they never would do in real life? Yeah. But that’s their problem, not mine.
Google started requiring you to allow your real name to be displayed on app reviews. Yeahh… no. I have an alternate gmail address that I use just for stuff like that, and it does NOT display my legal name.
If you look hard enough you’ll find my name on the board.
Absolutely. There needs to be more proactive pursuit of obvious hate campaigns, but there are too many legitimate reasons for people to want or need some protection of their privacy when discussing subjects they find sensitive or risky.
But any person or entity promoting themselves as some sort of representative, or serious academic researcher, when engaging in debate or some campaign, ought to be identifying themselves - and who funds their activities. (Bit of a hot topic here, in the middle of our election campaign).
Yeah, I think there are contexts where it’s probably normal - if you are trying to establish yourself as a name in an industry or profession where you would be credited by name on papers, in interviews and such, then your name is already out there.
The weird context where this arose for me is video production - the software I use (Davinci Resolve) is used by industry professionals - people who actively want their name in the credits of the movies they work on, because that means more, possibly higher-profile work in the future.
So in their discussion forum, they have the ‘real names’ rule - and their rationale is ‘we’re video professionals - we don’t hide under rocks’. The problem with that is, they have made their software available for free to the general public (partly because growing the up-and-coming user base strengthens the position of their paid-for products in the marketplace - students, for example, who learn their software, might be inclined to use it when they graduate and enter the industry).
But having opened up the software like that, they have engaged with sections of the public who really don’t want to be known by their real name - including minors, vloggers, influencers, etc. Of course no user is obliged to join the real-names-only forum, but if you want official support, want to report a bug, want to request a feature, you have to divulge your real name - not just to the company, but on a public forum.
It’s a policy that kind of made sense for them before they decided to outgrow the context where that policy makes sense (but honestly, it never even needed to be a policy - people who really have the horn for posting under their real name could choose to do that all along, without a rule saying they must).
if this was 1990 and aol 1/2.0 then yes … because that would of killed 90 percent of the online crap that we put up with right off the bat
Now in 2024? no… not at all because of said online crap that wasn’t stopped on the then infant internet
I’m not sure it could really have stopped anything unless the policy was somehow globally and rigorously enforced - without that being possible, it would have made today’s problems a bit worse, I think - because honest people might have complied with the policy, and anyone with any kind of malicious or just self-serving intent, would not - there would be a greater volume of exploitable information out there.