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what do companies do with your phone number ?
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this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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One 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.
How do you combat this sort of thing? Besides periodically changing your phone number, of course
Obviously, 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.
This 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.
Yep. 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.
Oh, 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?
they're talking about sites like Facebook or Google
I tried random numbers and internet numbers with Openai, Wolt and Revolut.
They were all rejected