Anyone else feels like they want to destroy their old sim and never give their contact to anyone ever again?
If signal gets the new username feature, this just might be what i do, so fricking tired of people just blindly giving random apps and websites their contact permissions and they get my contact as well, and there’s nothing i can do about it
I just don’t like that anyone with my number can simply just call me whenever they want and not answering is seen as something that needs an explanation. Don’t get me wrong, I think that being able to make phone calls is a great thing but not in it’s current form. Would be much better if people had to send a message first and I could then call back when it suits me or something. It’s crazy that you can just demand my full attention to yourself when ever you want. For the very least it should be something truly urgent.
Agreed. Phone numbers are now people’s de-facto UIDs. And somehow we collectively decided that Big Tech should have free access to this information to construct giant social graphs and analyze as it sees fit. Crazy sh**.
So the decline of SMS definitely has a silver lining. If each siloed messaging app uses its own UIDs, and this data stays out of people’s d** contact lists*, then in theory this is a privacy win.
What I worry about is that the OS gatekeepers, i.e. Google and Apple, will contrive to get apps like Signal and Telegram to populate the mobile contact lists with these new IDs. “So you never lose your data”, etc. Then they can keep triangulating the information and we’re back to square one.
The only failsafe solution is to ban individual users from sharing their friends’ IDs without their consent. Just as the GDPR bans websites from doing exactly the same thing. For that the EU is our only hope as usual.
Ha! So people do audit the edit history! I agree but I also think people swear too much, including me apparently. It’s cheap, it adds nothing, it devalues the language, IMO to drop a fuck or shit or damn is mainly about making the speaker feel better, it does nothing for the reader except undermine the seriousness of whatever they’re reading.
So asterisks felt like a good compromise, d*** it.
Quite the opposite. I am very worried I would lose contact with some people that I talk to but not all that often and never have contact with them again. I’m isolated enough as it is. I’m glad contacts can be backed up.
I did just that about 7 or so years ago. Only gave my number to family members and really close people (maybe 5 at most). Also deleted all my social media.
One of the best decisions of my life.
Unfortunately, I was just getting started on “the real world” and would get any job thrown my way. One of them required me to reply to my manager on WhatsApp so I ended having to create one and give them my number. I’ve since left that job and I’m now no longer a junior in my field, but still feels feels bad on my record :(
I recall setting up a Google Voice number for fielding calls from recruiters and the like, but that’s likely not the best method for privacy since it’s through Google.
I’m lucky there. I moved across the country and never changed my phone number, but the few people who would call me from where I used to live are already in my contacts, so I know that 99% of the time, if it’s a local or regional area code to where I live now, it’s not a spam call. It’s been true for 10 years now. I don’t know if there is a way to get a phone number from another area code where you don’t live, but it would be a good solution for some people.
It’s funny I just came from this post, which I suspect is this exact problem. Spammy apps collecting contact details and then tricking more people into signing up:
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