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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?

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[-] MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world 148 points 2 months ago

Mid 30s and I feel ancient right now.

[-] wallybeavis@lemmy.world 53 points 2 months ago

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

[-] radix@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago
[-] wallybeavis@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

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!

[-] BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place 9 points 2 months ago

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

[-] illi@lemm.ee 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Man rotary phones were the best! Such a joy to dial.

[-] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

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[-] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago

Residential listings were "white pages" and businesses were "yellow pages."

Yes, they were big, printed on very thin paper, with small typeface.

[-] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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

[-] GildorInglorion@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

Milton Hershey made chocolate, a town, and a school that inherited a controlling interest in the chocolate company.

[-] GildorInglorion@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago
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[-] Geekocracy@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Wow! I grew up with these. (Nostalgia intensifies!)

[-] wallybeavis@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

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!

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[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] illi@lemm.ee 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[-] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago
[-] illi@lemm.ee 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Man, I was already feeling ancient. You using "1900s" didn't help much :D

[-] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

I did that one on purpose as a joke! 😁

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[-] Fosheze@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

Not even 30 and I feel ancient right now.

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[-] Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works 44 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Cobrachicken@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago

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.

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

Geemany, is that where the cricket got his name?

[-] geekwithsoul@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago

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”

[-] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 38 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Balthazar@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago

And didn't you have to pay to not be listed?

[-] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago

You did, at least eventually. This could be argued to be a very early, not to mention analog, form of enshittification.

[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 28 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] SerotoninSwells@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 12 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place 27 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

Original SEO

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

Same goes for a lot of generic-sounding "A" business names- Acme, Apex, Ajax, A+, American-whatever, etc.

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[-] person420@lemmynsfw.com 7 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works 26 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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...

[-] geekwithsoul@lemm.ee 9 points 2 months ago

<waves at likely a fellow genealogist!> :)

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 21 points 2 months ago

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.

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[-] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 16 points 2 months ago

Charles Bukowski wrote maybe the most beautiful paean to the fact of the telephone book:

https://poemsdaily.livejournal.com/123676.html

[-] 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.

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[-] MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net 9 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

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[-] some_guy 7 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] DirigibleProtein@aussie.zone 7 points 2 months ago
[-] viralJ@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

I come from Poland and yes, totally. When I started school, and missed lessons because I was sick or whatever, I could just take the phone book and find the surname of the classmate I wanted to get notes or homework from. If there were a few surnames on the list and I didn't know their father (it was always the man of the house who was listed) first name, I could just go by who appeared to live closest to the school. Or just start calling all the numbers until I got the right one.

[-] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

TIL we’re at the point where people don’t know what a phone book is. My god I’m old.

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

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