Alright! Fun story time.
So, directly across the street from my house, there were two pay phones. You could call them, but they wouldn’t ring out loud.
I had both of them on speed dial and when someone would pull up I’d hit one of the two buttons and hope I got the right one. When I did, I’d prank the person. Usually it was just standard. “911, what’s your emergency?” “Oh! I, uh, I’m on a pay phone. I didn’t mean to call the 911.” “SIR! We get prank calls from this number constantly. You stay where you are! An officer will be there to file a report. If leave, you risk being arrested. The owner of the store has a camera on that phone and we will find you!”
They’d wait around sometimes. Most of the time they’d leave. My friends and I would be on the floor laughing.
As fun as that was, nothing ever topped this one.
A girl pulled up to the phone in the middle of the night and tried to make a call. I hit the speed dial button but I got the wrong one. She left the phone, walked over to the side of the store, pulled her pants down and pissed on the side of the building. I dialed the phone she was previously on and prayed she’d pick it up again. She did! I heard her dial a number, and I started breathing heavy on the phone. She said, “Hello, someone on there?” I replied in a deep, growly voice, “Hey. You forgot to wipe.”
She slammed the phone on the receiver, looked around frantically, and hopped in her car and peeled out.
My brother laughed like a damn donkey and nearly passed out. I couldn’t breathe laughing because of how hard he was laughing. It truly was an amazing moment in my life.
You’re a legend.
/r/thathappened
/r/nothingeverhappens
I remember doing this at my town’s movie theater!
Woah! Massive doxxing
Pft show me where they’re at on Google maps…
I believe it is approximately here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/w2dmLbTR9qwWZHoq9
That area has the last working payphone by Verizon in New Hampshire.
I can find it for you on Rand McNally.
The magical land where hamburgers eat people?
It’s also where they wear hats on their feet.
Everything that was in the phone book is still public record, and searchable online or by phone, unless you pay for an unlisted number.
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.
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
This is how drugs used to be sold.
I remember having a lesson in middle school on how to use a phone book. The information came in handy quite a few times once I hit a job but I think phone books started dying out in the mid 2000s.
They still have a lot of payphones in the city. I use them to call people and scream death threats at.
Must be the only remaining use case.
Which, looking at it from a 21st century perspective I’d be terrified if someone just put my god damn address in a book most people kept lying around. I’m still pissed at Snapchat for sharing my live gps location with my contacts.
It wasn’t really that bad.
They only had the numbers of local people and the phone book would just give you name, address and phone number. If you’re the Terminator and there happen to be 3 Sarah Connors in the phone book, too bad, you’ve got to visit all 3 of them. You could ask to have your number unlisted and many people did, particularly celebrities. Nobody had an on-line presence so the only way people would even know the name of most people was if you told them.
In case you weren’t aware, that information is still public, but now it’s online.
Edit: just looked myself up on whitepages, and it not only shows my full address, but all my previous addresses too.
The Terminator in the first movie used a phone book to hunt down and kill all the Sarah Connors it could find
AFAIK you can have it removed by opting out At least in Canada and the US.
Phonebooks with home addresses? I don’t remember that existed. Which country is that?
I mean, sure… names and area-codes made it relatively trivial to figure out the home address, but it wasn’t printed in them.
Edit: ugh, I think I just misremembered. Getting old sucks.
Oh yeah, it was normal in the US for a while.
In fact, it’s used as a plot device in lots of old movies where detectives (or the Terminator) are trying to track someone down.
I was totally coming to mention how much of a security risk these were if you had to run from Terminators.
Assuming Terminators have internet access, they’ll find you way easier now.
Yeah if that movie was made in modern times, Sarah Connor’s roommate would have tagged her in some thirst-trap pics on Instagram with geotagging trackers. She’d never stand a chance.
Grew up in the seventies and eighties in the US. Phone books definitely had your home address. You had to pay extra to opt out.
Hmm maybe I misremember. Has been probably 30 years since I last touched a phonebook.
Same in the 00’s when i grew up. It was the easiest way to find your friend’s address if they had a unique last name.
They did in Canada. Here’s a weird example from winterpig
I think Elrond used those
They still do, though at a much smaller form factor and scale. The ones i have cover a 3-5 county area
Maybe it is some sort of shrine?
