143
Phonebooks (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by WoahWoah@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] SonicBlue03@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I'm amazed they were even that thin. It seems like they'd have to be huge.

[-] MolochAlter@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

Very small font on very thin paper.

[-] rebelsimile@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 months ago

Yeah it felt like the Bible and the white/yellow pages used the thinnest paper I’d ever seen

[-] jqubed@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

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).

[-] dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago

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.

this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
143 points (93.3% liked)

No Stupid Questions

36055 readers
440 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS