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?
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.
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.