I have a question, what do companies do with your phone number ? can they trace who you are and what you do ?
Turbo ( @Turbo@lemmy.ml ) 49•10 months agoOne thing I would suspect is they leverage third parties and share your phone number to get back additional known data about you or your interests or other activities which other companies have shared. I think in a way it ends up being a connection point for your data across many places.
- demystify ( @demystify@lemmy.ml ) English10•10 months ago
How do you combat this sort of thing? Besides periodically changing your phone number, of course
ᗪIᐯEᖇGEᑎTᕼᗩᖇᗰOᑎIᑕᔕ ( @DivergentHarmonics@sopuli.xyz ) 5•10 months agoObviously, never enter your real number in a web form unless the service depends on you getting called back … in which case you likely would have called the company by phone anyway.
Sternout ( @Sternout@feddit.de ) 9•10 months agoThis is not possible.
Most services that require a phone number also verify it via sms.
Additionally they check so that each number can only be used once, disabling most free sms receivers online.
VolunTerry ( @VolunTerry@monero.town ) English1•10 months agoYep. I’ve tried using dummy numbers in the past for things where no phone contact is required for contact and it frequently triggers fraud prevention even if not rendered useless by sms verification before submission.
ᗪIᐯEᖇGEᑎTᕼᗩᖇᗰOᑎIᑕᔕ ( @DivergentHarmonics@sopuli.xyz ) 1•10 months agoOh, i never experienced this. My thought is rather, “nobody will call anyway” … that said, perhaps it’s because i’m largely living outside of online buseness. Location: Europe mostly. What busenesses are you talking about, out of interest?
chayleaf ( @chayleaf@lemmy.ml ) 2•10 months agothey’re talking about sites like Facebook or Google
Sternout ( @Sternout@feddit.de ) 1•10 months agoI tried random numbers and internet numbers with Openai, Wolt and Revolut.
They were all rejected
Ricaz ( @Ricaz@lemmy.ml ) 3•10 months agoDo you have any reason to believe this other than “corporations bad”?
Sternout ( @Sternout@feddit.de ) 7•10 months agoSnowden for example
Also have you never heard of data brokers?
Em Adespoton ( @adespoton@lemmy.ca ) 41•10 months agoThey use it as a primary key for linking all your other personal information, use it to geolocate you, use it to sell to marketing lists as a verified number, and use it to cross reference with other sources that leak your phone number.
It’s the “one ring”.
deo ( @deo@beehaw.org ) English13•10 months agoOne number to track them all,
One number to find them,
One number to sell for spam,
And in the metadata bind them.
Atemu ( @Atemu@lemmy.ml ) 11•10 months agoOne of the more legitimate uses is to have a decent way of identifying humans. Most humans only have a very limited amount of phone numbers (usually exactly one) and even extreme cases can only acquire a rather limited amount of them.
Contrast that to most other identification methods such as email or online accounts where a singular entity can create limitless amounts of them, that’s quite a lot better.
Obviously most companies also abuse your phone number for malicious purposes such as tracking, profiling, spam etc.
glad_cat ( @glad_cat@lemmy.sdf.org ) 7•10 months agoIn France, every company can, and will, sell your phone number to marketing companies. Whenever I switch from one phone carrier to another, I magically get a lot of phone spam in the following week. Then it stops after I have blocked most unknown callers, but it happens every time for me.
Envis10n ( @envis10n@lemm.ee ) 7•10 months agoThey use it to call you up on the weekends to see if you want to come hang out.
Ertebolle ( @Ertebolle@kbin.social ) 10•10 months ago“Hey Niko it’s your cousin SiriusXM”
Envis10n ( @envis10n@lemm.ee ) 5•10 months agoLet’s go bowling!
Bri Guy ( @brihuang95@sopuli.xyz ) English4•10 months agoWhere is big house?! Where is fast car?!
LinkOpensChest_wav ( @LinkOpensChest_wav@beehaw.org ) 1•10 months ago“I told you I don’t want to hang out with you.”
“I’m sorry, but I’ll need that rejection mailed to me by post in a hand-signed letter.”
Franzia ( @Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 2•10 months agoI wish
ciko22i3 ( @ciko22i3@sopuli.xyz ) 5•10 months agonothing for now 😀
jet ( @jet@hackertalks.com ) English3•10 months agoGeolocation data brokers will let companies user your phone number to index you based on location (yes… location of your phone)
if i had a company and had to collect phone numbers then id just message every one of those phone numbers: BRICK