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?
Yeah.
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.
Yes
Charles Bukowski wrote maybe the most beautiful paean to the fact of the telephone book:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!> :)
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.
If anyone gets pictures of me naked, let me know what you think 🫦
Mid 30s and I feel ancient right now.
Not even 30 and I feel ancient right now.
Yeah, OP might just be a dumbass.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!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! 😁
Residential listings were “white pages” and businesses were “yellow pages.”
Yes, they were big, printed on very thin paper, with small typeface.
Wow! I grew up with these. (Nostalgia intensifies!)
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
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.
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
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.