I was talking to a coworker about these new phishing attacks that send your name and address and sometimes a picture of your house, and I was saying how creepy it is, and they told me that phonebooks were delivered to everyone and used to have like literally everyone in a city listed by last name with their phone number and address. Is that for real?
Mid 30s and I feel ancient right now.
Mid 40s, and I too feel old now - at first I thought OP was setting us up for a joke. The local phone company still delivered phone books to everyone in my city until a few years ago.
I think it was an old legal requirement for any phone company providing landline services to also provide phonebooks. Unfortunately most weren’t even recycled, they were either burned in backyard firepits, or just thrown out
You want to feel really old?
Rotary phones weren’t even that long ago?!??! I still remember the swooop, click-click-click-click sound, oh, and the ear shattering ringing bells. I am happy that in our lifetime we’ve come so far that kids don’t understand tools from just a couple decades ago. I remember my father showing me a stack of punch cards he used at work and warning me not to touch them - but what I also know is, that those kids better get the hell off my damn lawn!
Fun fact: You could dial without even using the rotary. In a morse-code-like fashion, quickly click the hang-up knob the number you want with a pause in-between numbers. So if you were calling 558-9151 (remember 7 digit numbers‽), you’d do (c = click):
c-c-c-c-c
c-c-c-c-c
c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c
c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c
c
c-c-c-c-c
c
Man rotary phones were the best! Such a joy to dial.
I had one in my room! Such a good feel to it. Same with picking up and hanging up!
This was in the early 2000s, btw. They were already relics, but landlines were still commonly used when I was in high school, and it had such a handsome look to it and felt great to use. I have long thought that a product that would do incredibly well would be a cell phone charging dock where you put your phone in and while it’s charging it just acts like a landline rotary phone. The user experience is very, very gratifying, and if you’ve ever tried to hold a call while your phone is plugged into the wall you know how much better a solid headset with a coil wire would feel than that.
Hey, they did a good job, and no one was being mean about it. That’s nice.
I would probably have similar difficulties… I can’t even tell what they were doing wrong and then suddenly doing right. I do know the basic motion because I’ve seen it in shows I think, like you spin it around… but I never really thought about how precisely you do that. And you only had a certain amount of time to dial it?? That’s crazy.
I will say I would have figured out you need to pick it up first sooner. But even my office phone I dial the number, see it on the little screen, hit send, and then lift up the receiver if I don’t want to use speaker phone.
They were starting by putting a finger in zero and then dragging to the number. And for zero they were dragging all the way to the stop.
You’re supposed to dial by putting a finger in each number hole and then dragging to the stop. So they dialed zero correctly, but only zero.
You’re supposed to dial by putting a finger in each number hole and then dragging to the stop. So they dialed zero correctly, but only zero.
How do you do that with only five fingers?? I guess that makes sense that the was such little time to dial it. Like you put each finger in the holes and then spin the whole thing? How does it figure out which… wait, then how would you do repeated numbers? Or did numbers never repeat…? I’m confused.
You dialled by putting a finger in each number hole one at a time, dragging each one to the stop. When I was a kid our town’s phone numbers had just four digits, didn’t take long to dial.
Your number had what now?? Wow. Maybe you mean five? I was reading a Times article that they changed the four digit codes in 1930, but maybe that wasn’t standardized across the country. I’ve learned more about phone history than I ever expected to in my life. 🤣
No, do it sequentially. To dial 515-2400 you put your finger in the 5, drag it to the stop, then release. Next put your finger in the 1, drag it to the stop, then release. Next put your finger in the 5, drag it to the stop, then release. Next put your finger in the 2, drag it to the stop, then release. Next put your finger in the 4, drag it to the stop, then release. Next put your finger in the 0, drag it to the stop, then release. Finally put your finger in the 0 again, drag it to the stop, then release.
OMG. Why would they put a timer on it then?? That seems like it would take forever.
You mean to say you’ve never even seen a move with someone using a rotary phone?
No joke! I don’t know if I’ve ever actually seen a phone book. How would they even fit? Seems like they would have been enormous.
I did see a payphone in a restaurant once but it didn’t work. I saw another one outside of a gas station on a road trip in the south. That one had a dial tone, but I think you had to pay more to call anyone we knew, so we just took selfies pretending to use it.
Residential listings were “white pages” and businesses were “yellow pages.”
Yes, they were big, printed on very thin paper, with small typeface.
OMG 🤣🤣🤣
Edit: is Hershey where they make the chocolate? Didn’t realize that was a town and not just a company. I’m learning so much today
Milton Hershey made chocolate, a town, and a school that inherited a controlling interest in the chocolate company.
And an amusement park
Wonka vibes intensify
Oh and a really good hospital too it looks like. Because he made chocolate shaped like a drop?? Dang
Looked it up, that school seems very cool. It does sound like you’re describing Willy Wonka though.
You are going to think I made this up, but the street lights are shaped like Hershey kisses.
Like in the town town or the amusement thing.
Did this dude enslave small-statured orange people by chance?
The town, or at least the main street that goes by the factory. As far as I know, no orange people were enslaved.
Seriously though, Milton Hershey was surprisingly progressive for his time. He built affordable homes for his workers and helped them become home owners. The school he built was originally for orphaned boys.
Wow! I grew up with these. (Nostalgia intensifies!)
Did the voice on the payphone say: You must please deposit 25 cents to place your call LOL I think that’s engrained in my memory
Fun fact:
Once touch tone phones became the norm there were actually games you could play by just calling a number. There was also a number you could call and get the local time and temperature. Oh, and lets not forget Mr. MoviePhone!I don’t remember a voice, but maybe! I just remember the tone because we were excited that it worked. Someone came out of the gas station and saw us taking pictures and stuff and they told us that it’s there because until recently (and even still) cell coverage was really bad or nonexistent in the area, so a lot of people still used landlines.
I’m old - it was a dime for my calls.
One use for a phone book was to prop a little kid in a regular chair so they could eat at the table. Like, after they outgrew a baby highchair and could balance on their own. Also you could prove your strength by ripping one in half.
Listings were usually under the name of the adult male, for safety as well as sexism. A woman living alone would probably use just her initials for safety.
They were quite big, but used super thin paper and small font. There were books thicker still, but still the phrase “thick as a phone book” was used.
There were also Yellow Pages (same format as phone books, but entirely yellow) which listed businesess and stuff.
Pre-internet these were the household essentials.
There was also a number you could call to ask for phone numbers or other stuff. Basically a call in google.
The 1900s were crazy
Man, I was already feeling ancient. You using “1900s” didn’t help much :D
I did that one on purpose as a joke! 😁
Yeah we were still getting them up to line 2010 or so, even though we haven’t had a land line active in my house since I moved in.
Not even 30 and I feel ancient right now.
Yeah, OP might just be a dumbass.
Generally, yeah. Your initials and family name - of the account payer only. First line of your address. I think the Terminator film, amongst others, shows this being used to locate someone.
In a public phone booth, accessible to everyone. Later then, you had the chance to opt out of the phone book “service”, here in Geemany that was around the time alternative phone providers appeared. Now seems to be default, so you got to watch to whom you give your number.
Geemany, is that where the cricket got his name?
Actually in most places it was however the person wished to be listed and often included full first names and sometimes middle initials. Or could sometimes be a couple like “John and Mary Doe”
You could opt out of being listed, but anyone who did that was considered a weirdo hermit. Why would you not want someone to be able to call you?
Oh God, it feels so weird saying it nowadays.
And didn’t you have to pay to not be listed?
You did, at least eventually. This could be argued to be a very early, not to mention analog, form of enshittification.
Yup. Totally real. It’s all essentially public information to begin with. You have to have an address for taxes, and deeds need names on them. So there’s a certain degree of information that’s going to be available to pretty much everyone, if they go looking.
Phone books were useful at one point, though less so for individuals. They’re still useful for local businesses.
Phone books were useful at one point, though less so for individuals.
Not saying you’re wrong but it reminded me of a moment when I was a kid. I was all of five years old when I got lost in rural Arizona. I was visiting my grandparents and my cousin and I went out looking for turtles after a monsoon the night before. I got separated from my older cousin and then lost. I wandered around for hours until I found the main road that led through a nearby small town. I managed to hitchhike to the local trading post where the clerk managed to find my grandparents phone number to let them know they had found me.
They were sometimes useful. Also, they were great for prank calls.
I’m 38. I remember a few times when I was a kid needed to call a classmate urgently. Like, maybe i needed to know what math problems we were assigned as homework. For folks I knew well, I might have their number written down in a book in a desk drawer, but for anyone else I would have to look up their last name in the white pages and read down a list trying to find the right number.
Was their dad’s name Prescott? No, that’s not an ethnic match. Here’s a David. That sounds right. Oh! And it’s on Beacon! That’s the right neighborhood! That’s got to be it!
I think about it all the time. You could find your teacher’s house and just go drop off a fruit basket or something if you wanted. It was crazy! It was just assumed that if someone wanted to find your house it was probably for a sensible reason. Why otherwise? If you’re paranoid or a public figure then maybe you’d choose to be unlisted, but for anyone else there’s no point in it.
Simpler times, for sure. I’d still like to go back. I think it was worth it. The alternative doesn’t seem to work. We’re all getting constantly harassed with robo calls and stalked on line. At this point, the only people who don’t know where we live are the ones who might drop off a casserole. We’ve gained nothing.
Yep, which allowed us to make great prank calls because people wouldn’t expect us to be calling them since they hadn’t given us their phone number. If someone had a popular name, like Miguel Rodriguez in Miami, you might have to make a few attempts to get the right one though.
Fun fact: Phone books are the reason there are some businesses called AAA. Businesses, such as locksmiths, plumbers, and other rarely used services, would name themselves AAA because it would make their listing first in the type/subject by alphabetical order.
Original SEO
It was more than just the phone books. Back before smart phones, if you needed to look up a phone number you’d call information (411) and they’d look it up for you. For instance, if you were stuck on the side of the road and needed a tow truck.
Information would be able to look up businesses close to where you were using the NPA/NXX of the phone number you were calling from (the first six digits of the number including the area code) and then give you a couple options in alphabetical order.
I had a client who had a phone number in every exchange in NYC and had a name like “AAA Towing” so no matter where in NYC you called information for a tow truck from, they’d usually be the first option given to you.
Same goes for a lot of generic-sounding “A” business names- Acme, Apex, Ajax, A+, American-whatever, etc.
Atari, Apple, Activision, Acclaim (all named to get ahead of each other in the phone book.)
How do you know these in particular were named for that reason and not just because the founders liked the name for any other reason?
Is joke.
Am oh
Acme has the added benefit of meaning “peak” so it could convey the connotation of being “best”
Phone books had your name and phone number. Some had your street address too.
Before that, there were books that even had your occupation.Random directory example from 1886:
Last name, first name, occupation, street name, number.1790…
<waves at likely a fellow genealogist!> :)
I have never felt so old.
Name, address, and phone number of the account holder used to be published in books that got sent to everyone in the city and also just left lying in boxes that had phones in them if you needed to make a call while you weren’t home, because your phone used to be tied to a physical location.
You also used to have to pay extra to make calls to places far away because it used more phone circuits. And by “far away” I mean roughly 50 miles.It’s not the biggest thing in the world, privacy wise, since a surprising amount of information is considered public.
If you know an address, it’s pretty much trivial to find the owners name, basic layout of the house, home value, previous owners, utility bill information, tax payments, and so on. I looked up my information and was able to pretty easily get the records for my house, showing I pay my bills on time, when I got my air conditioner replaced and who the contractor who did it was.As an example, here’s the property record for a parking structure owned by the state of Michigan. I chose a public building accessible by anyone and owned by a government to avoid randomly doxing someone, but it’s really as easy as searching for public records for some county or city and you’ll find something pretty fast.
I use one of those services, Optery in my case. Do you think that’s just a waste of money (honest question)? It definitely reduced my footprint for simple googling, but I’ve been wondering if it’s really worth the cost.
Honestly? It’s not something I would pay for. Google has their own service where they’ll let you know if they find your information and you can ask them to remove the search result.
Beyond that, there’s some information that you just fundamentally can’t make private and no service can get taken down.
Most data mining sites just collect those public records and put them next to each other, so they get a pile of your name, birthday, where you were born, how active you are as a voter and all that stuff.Removing your address from Google maps just seems silly to me. That there is a residence there is fundamentally public information, not being on maps doesn’t make it less public it just probably causes issues for delivery drivers.
Anyone who has your data and is going to be a jerk about it isn’t going to listen to a request to take it down either. They’re just going to send you spam messages.
The odds of being Targeted by a determined individual who’s focused explicitly on you is low. They tend to target a broad swath of people, and then dig in on people who take the bait a few times.
Hmm. Thanks for your response. It does it across across about 600 databases, and they have power of attorney to initiate the removals and follow up, etc.
I guess I just didn’t like that it was so easy to just Google my name and then have my address. It did help with that, but maybe you’re right that it’s kind of pointless in the bigger sense. I guess I’m just trying to keep someone IRL that gets pissed at me for whatever reason from immediately knowing where I live. I feel like most people aren’t going to work very hard at it.
Yeah, and it’s not like you want the information out there, it’s just that in my opinion it’s not something I would pay money for. Having the authority to make the request doesn’t mean that the party on the other end is obligated to comply, or in some cases even legally permitted to.
I’ve used Google’s service where they send you an email to review results if they find something, and my Google results for my incredibly distinctive name are basically only professional resources that I kinda want to be findable.
Yeah that makes sense. Though, hopefully more states (or the fed) follow California, Connecticut, Colorado, and Virginia’s lead in passing right to be deleted and stronger digital privacy laws.
Charles Bukowski wrote maybe the most beautiful paean to the fact of the telephone book:
deleted by creator
Yes. I live in a larger metropolitan area and there were both white and yellow (business) page editions that were 2 1/2 inches thick each.
I’m amazed they were even that thin. It seems like they’d have to be huge.
Very small font on very thin paper.
Yeah it felt like the Bible and the white/yellow pages used the thinnest paper I’d ever seen
You also need to keep in mind that there were not nearly as many phone numbers back then. While today a family of 4 might have a cell phone for each person (especially by the time the kids are teenagers), in the 20th century most families just had one number for the whole household (and the earlier you go there might have even been just one actual phone in the house).
I’m probably misremembering, but I swear our phonebook was at least 5 inches thick. We used collect the neighbors because they didn’t want them, and then me and my friends would stack them in the club house we chairs.
You could opt out of being in the phone book. I had to do this because a crazy woman who had had a teacher by the same name as me, in the same suburb as me, kept ringing me. First call she said, “Guess who this is?” Dunno. By the tenth call that first day she was yelling down the phone that I was a liar, asking me “Why are you being like this?!?” Because I was never your teacher! No caller id back then, so I had to keep right on answering. One time I picked up and shouted “FUCK OFF!” and yeah it was a work colleague, that was awkward.
Heck, there was even overlap with the internet where you could briefly lookup anyone in any city’s white pages listing online for free! People used to sign their Usenet posts with their full name, phone, and mailing address, though. We were really stupid in hindsight, but it was a more innocent time.
I hated how these were delivered to you whether you wanted them or not. So much junk.
They made really great fires though if you tore each page out, crumpled them up and stuffed them between the logs.
Also interesting, I took one about an inch or so thick and shot it point blank with a 12 gauge shotgun and tiny yellow circular confetti came out, which was neat to see.
My parents got the newspaper when I was young, that’s kind of that was. It would just stack up because they rarely ever read it and then eventually we’d burn a bunch in the backyard firepit or use it to start the fireplace.
Yes
See the film, Terminator. It’s how the machine finds women named Sarah Connor. Or maybe that was Kyle Reese. Either way, it was a major plot point.
