3 ms·
Wish it supported wildcards. I'm not comfortable putting in my phone number for the exact reasons the author states.
by oceliker 6y ago
Wish it supported wildcards. I'm not comfortable putting in my phone number for the exact reasons the author states.
- ghostpepper 6y agoAllowing searches with wildcards is analogous to publishing the entire database. That being said, I think the cat is out of the bag on this one so maybe that wouldn’t be the end of the world.
- gruez 6y ago>Allowing searches with wildcards is analogous to publishing the entire database. What's the harm in publishing a list of phone numbers, without any other info attached? I can generate a list of all phone numbers in north america by iterating through all the digits.
- otterley 6y agoA list of valid phone numbers is more valuable than a list of all possible phone numbers, for the same reason that a list of valid passwords is much more valuable than a list of all possible passwords. It saves miscreants a lot of time and effort.
- gruez 6y agoI'm not sure how it works in other countries, but for the US the numbers are generated by area code, and they're constantly allocating new ones because the old ones have been used up[1]. This is with number recycling. Therefore if you randomly generate a phone number for an "old" area code you probably are going to get a valid number. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_Numbering_Plan_area_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_Numberi...
- adrianmonk 6y agoHmm, so that suggests that getting a phone number with a "new" area code could be a way of reducing junk phone calls.
- dawnerd 6y agoI don't get it either... https://www.yellowbook.com/order-directory/ https://www.yellowbook.com/order-directory/
- csunbird 6y agoThe data is already public, to be honest.