I have noticed that some sites will accept a landline number for account verification, but most do not - I suppose they need a voice call option of sorts for it to work. My ISP has a forum and subscribers have complained that they were charged a fee for text messages to their landline. It turns out the texts were mostly from advertisers and charities. The ISP did not block them .
I speak for myself and I won't be the only one: - Other than a few necessary real life situations I don't give out my phone#. -Yes my phone number is personal information. By keeping it as confidential as possible it is one less piece of info for scammers such as ID thieves. -I don't give it out to random people -I don't give it to online people -I don't think you can reliably say companies are bound to follow privacy protection laws and even if they did it's still not safe (look at all the wilders posts, for example, about major sites being hacked/compromised with millions of account info accessible to the highest bidder. That info includes phone#s. If it's not there to begin with that considerably lessens the odds. My phone # is my business and my right to give it out to who I like. All that said, do I get cold calls? Yes I still get "seasons" of random idiotic calls like M$ techs wanting to fix my computer.
It's case by case for me, and sometimes a matter of principle. I don't mind using my mobile number for two-factor authentication or for other reasons for a site or service that is important to me. But I would not use a site that required my mobile number for no other reason than it required my mobile number for its own reasons and for no reasons that benefit me. And yeah, I would probably use probably use my mobile number for the local Pizza delivery or for reservation at a restaurant and not use it for this or that online service or web site. Again, it is case by case; it's a tradeoff, and it has to be what benefits me. It has probably been pointed out many, many times on a site like this that security and privacy is not black and white, not all or nothing, not on or off.
No offense intended. I am speaking of my family history. And senile & insane are different conditions.
zap, fine, just hope you are not going to go senile and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Besides, we need to muster as much vigilance as possible with all this evil breathing down our necks. Reckon senile folks do tend to do insane things, but you can be insane but not senile so I see your point. I think they're closely linked though.
I also thing that sometimes two-factor authentication is a good reason to give phone number for some company. Especially for banks. If I trust some company to keep my money (at least small amount for paying some bills), I think it is not so irrational to give phone number. The other thing is that pre-paid SIM cards are cheap and I can have more than one of them, so this means you can have more than one phone number. Just carefully choose which of them you don't share with anybody online and try to don't link them together.
Talking of giving phone numbers to random places, my niece was telling about a weird thing that happened to her the other week. She and her Dad have their cell phones on a family plan, the account is in her dads name. My niece had to return something she bought to a store. Part of the returns process is she had to give them her phone number. The lady typed in her phone number and said Donnie? My neice said no, that is my Dads name... My niece and her Dad have separate phone numbers they have never used each others phones BUT a few months ago when my niece upgraded her phone, Verizon put her new phone in her Dads name instead of her name by mistake. So how does a random high street store know Verizon had associated her Dad's name with that phone number?
Even brick and mortar merchants ask for mobile phone numbers now. I had this experience in a store that sells BBQ wares - the cashier asked for my phone number at the register. I declined to give it and was promptly told that it was a requisite when using a credit card. I said BS in the nicest possible way (using my inside voice) and the cashier processed my CC purchase. Others in the line were complying even though it was obviously a ruse. I also prefer not to give my mobile number to financial institutions because they are serial offenders when it comes to sharing (selling off) personal information. I also believe that online privacy statements are merely PR (often boilerplate). You usually find this drivel on their website, not in the contract you enter into.
Yes and that kind of activity comes from the top, the cashier is told to do it by the management and the management are told to make her do it by corporate so the cashier gets into trouble if her manager catches her not doing it because he gets into trouble if that store's monthly stats don't meet the target for the amount of customer phone numbers they are supposed to get...
Just to be clear, the primary markets for "fake" mobile numbers are arguably accounts used for promotion, advertising and propaganda. And arguably, it'll be the same for anything that replaces them.
I had a hotmail account and was one of the first to have one. Hotmail at that time was a great little mailer; webmail was in it's infancy at the time. Hotmail had a more pleasant frontage than Elm and Pine . It had not at that time been bought out by M-osoft. Last year M-osoft said that there was a security problem and locked me out of my Hotmail account until I gave them certain information. I couldn't remember what I originally used to register and now I have been locked out permanently. I liked to keep the account for nostalgic reasons and to verify my pioneer status but anything that is good or useful to the user but not the company or government has to be manipulated into an ad driven sneaky monster or have that many security holes and backdoors in it that it becomes unfeasable to use if you value your privacy, security and your humanity. There used to be a great little messenger program in those days called PowWow ( I used to use a slightly cut down version which I could fit on and ran from a floppy disk) that was full of fun and had many aspects to it, had a great following but it was just bought out and scrapped. I talked with people all over the world at that time. Years ago, here at Wilders, the kind of conversation, we are having today was not acceptable, I suppose because it was seen to be 'political' and security software was the main focus to meet conventional concerns and the forum role was to act as a vehicle for discourse for the professionals in those areas. Security forums seemed aimed at sys-op interest only and people 'in the know' and not general public concerns and there was a certain snobbishness and 'keep out pleb' feel which only occasionaly rears it's head today. Currently we cannot avoid the reality of the attack that we are under in nearly ever aspect of our online and offline life. Very soon with smart meters, smart tv, surveillance, monitoring , iris recognition, facial recognition, movement identification, iris scanning, nano bots, quantum calculations, attitude bots and general profiling and the networking and centralising of that information we will not be able to claim an offline life at all. They want your soul and the way things are going they will get it.
I haven't used this feature myself. But the extension Blur from Abine has a feature called masked phone that I imagine could help with situations like these https://www.abine.com/maskme/features/phones/
@sdmod - I had the same thing happen with Hotmail. I was a very early user. My JoWazzoo@hotmail.com brings back my memories as an Abuse person and spam fighter. And access to it was, like you, blocked. Darned M$. And as far as Google, I have a couple of Gmail accounts for certain purposes and log in from 5 different devices. And they started that phone number crap several months ago. While my tin foil hat is on fer sure, anyone who thinks that their phone number given to Google or M$ is not TIED to their Sooper-sooper-sooper cookies ... well Heh. Facebook in some ways is even worse. Phone number required for accessing yer account. And now you can even tie a photo in for certain purposes! And yes - 10 years ago we would not be having this conversations here. That was 10 years ago. Security & Privacy have changed big time.
I dont give my phone number to pizza places since I learned they sell that info. As far as protect/recover accounts. It is all a ruse to facilitate data harvesting. There is nothing secure about a cellphone number. People change their cellphone number all the time. I did not give MS my phone number when I opened that email account many years ago so there is no possible way to correlate my current cellphone number with the original owner of that email account.
In case anyone is interested. https://smsreceivefree.com/ Disposable numbers to receive verification code text messages Anyone who uses this free service can see all messages recieved by these numbers but verification codes are a one time hit so security is not an issue with them.
Well when I used it it felt like I was saying hey, corporate america F.U. So I felt bad. Ok im lying, haha
I'll give my number to anyone that legitimately needs it. Otherwise it's 555-555-5555 or that with any of the last 4 digits of your choosing.
