It wasn’t that, mass doxxing is still very easy, its just pay for play now. You know those random apps that (used to, mostly) ask for contact permissions? They’d send your entire address book to their servers, with the name and number of all your contacts. Now you pay per number to get a name from a phone number, or a number from a name.
Used to be that you paid to be unlisted and everyone was listed by default. This was necessary in the era of landline phones. If you really needed to get a hold of someone, it wasn’t uncommon to need to go through a call chain until you got through to them. Now that everyone has a phone in their pocket with their own number (not same number for each family) that’s no longer the norm.
There are still a few active payphones still around here! I haven’t seen a phone book in over a decade at least though lol
I think they eventually figured out mass doxxing isn’t such a good idea
All of that information is still free public record unless you pay for an unlisted number.
https://www.whitepages.com/
https://www.yellowpages.com/
It wasn’t that, mass doxxing is still very easy, its just pay for play now. You know those random apps that (used to, mostly) ask for contact permissions? They’d send your entire address book to their servers, with the name and number of all your contacts. Now you pay per number to get a name from a phone number, or a number from a name.
Used to be that you paid to be unlisted and everyone was listed by default. This was necessary in the era of landline phones. If you really needed to get a hold of someone, it wasn’t uncommon to need to go through a call chain until you got through to them. Now that everyone has a phone in their pocket with their own number (not same number for each family) that’s no longer the norm.
They were big in Korea until recently because conscripted soldiers couldn’t bring their phones with them