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> should email addresses be private? I dunno. Should your personal phone number be private? Or your home address? Would you be okay if I knew it and shared it

> should email addresses be private? I dunno. Should your personal phone number be private? Or your home address? Would you be okay if I knew it and shared it with a stranger? Or would you rather be asked permission to share it first? Seems pretty cut and dry to me. Yeah, there's going to be someone out there (there always is) who doesn't care, but I'd wager the majority would be pretty ticked off if you gave those pieces of information out to a rando on the street.

amszmidt 2y ago
There are plenty of countries where all that is public information, back in the day there even used to be a phone book with .. name, phone number, and address. And many countries have this now in digital form.
slimsag 2y ago
Interestingly, public U.S. state property records will just disclose where you live whether you like it or not. With as little as your name, a home address is trivial to find.
mjr00 2y ago
None of that information is actually private though. Your home address and personal phone number are likely in the public record for any number of reasons, such as ownership records or court filings. Or maybe a Facebook post from 2009 that your mom made. Unless you're one of the 0.00001% of people who do things like rotate your phone number and address annually, it's out there somewhere. But public vs private is a spectrum, not a binary true/false. My phone number is public because I get sales calls from various companies to it. It's annoying, but bearable. But there's a big gap between that and the New York Times putting my name, number and picture on the front page. So your home address and phone number aren't private. But they're also not readily accessible unless someone is really dedicated to finding them, so they're not quite public either.
GeoAtreides 2y ago
Phonebooks were a thing not so long ago...
- mdp2021 2y ago
  And they contained data of which people allowed disclosure. When you did not want your information to be published, you informed the telephony provider and the phonebooks would not include it.
  - exodust 2y ago
    For a fee. In Australia at least it cost money not to be listed in the phone book. Numbers were however tied to a property rather than individual personal phones in our pockets. When you think about it, mobile phone technology arrived quickly and caught everyone by surprise. Back in the 80s very few people thought we'd be carrying around "pocket TV phones" in such a short time.
chii 2y ago
The missing part is the action part. An email (or phone number, or address) is an identifier. Asking whether this identifier is public or private misses the important thing, which is the action that can be paird with the identifier. So therefore, there's no universal answer to whether the identifier should be public or private. It's a case by case basis, when paired with an action. For example, i don't want a shop to see me buying condoms, so shops shouldn't get my email address (or phone number).
harywilke 2y ago
We used to get these big books delivered to our doorsteps that had your name, your address and your personal phone number. You could pay to opt out.
- the_gorilla 2y ago
  If I published a list of all name and addresses, that's still different than "here is harywikle's full name and address". I imagine you wouldn't be too pleased?
  - hunter2_ 2y ago
    The link between online identity and offline identity is a sacred barrier. And I'm not sure that archive.org breached that particular barrier.
    - the_gorilla 2y ago
      That's the issue I take with the "phonebook" defense. It justifies doxing people by collecting and connecting publicly available information online. All the information is out there, it's all on a phone book, your email was published online, and so on, but the end result is clearly bad so something in the process should be handled more carefully.

amszmidt 2y ago

There are plenty of countries where all that is public information, back in the day there even used to be a phone book with .. name, phone number, and address. And many countries have this now in digital form.

slimsag 2y ago

Interestingly, public U.S. state property records will just disclose where you live whether you like it or not. With as little as your name, a home address is trivial to find.

mjr00 2y ago

None of that information is actually private though. Your home address and personal phone number are likely in the public record for any number of reasons, such as ownership records or court filings. Or maybe a Facebook post from 2009 that your mom made. Unless you're one of the 0.00001% of people who do things like rotate your phone number and address annually, it's out there somewhere. But public vs private is a spectrum, not a binary true/false. My phone number is public because I get sales calls from various companies to it. It's annoying, but bearable. But there's a big gap between that and the New York Times putting my name, number and picture on the front page. So your home address and phone number aren't private. But they're also not readily accessible unless someone is really dedicated to finding them, so they're not quite public either.

GeoAtreides 2y ago

Phonebooks were a thing not so long ago...

mdp2021 2y ago
And they contained data of which people allowed disclosure. When you did not want your information to be published, you informed the telephony provider and the phonebooks would not include it.
- exodust 2y ago
  For a fee. In Australia at least it cost money not to be listed in the phone book. Numbers were however tied to a property rather than individual personal phones in our pockets. When you think about it, mobile phone technology arrived quickly and caught everyone by surprise. Back in the 80s very few people thought we'd be carrying around "pocket TV phones" in such a short time.

chii 2y ago

The missing part is the action part. An email (or phone number, or address) is an identifier. Asking whether this identifier is public or private misses the important thing, which is the action that can be paird with the identifier. So therefore, there's no universal answer to whether the identifier should be public or private. It's a case by case basis, when paired with an action. For example, i don't want a shop to see me buying condoms, so shops shouldn't get my email address (or phone number).

harywilke 2y ago

We used to get these big books delivered to our doorsteps that had your name, your address and your personal phone number. You could pay to opt out.

the_gorilla 2y ago
If I published a list of all name and addresses, that's still different than "here is harywikle's full name and address". I imagine you wouldn't be too pleased?
- hunter2_ 2y ago
  The link between online identity and offline identity is a sacred barrier. And I'm not sure that archive.org breached that particular barrier.
  - the_gorilla 2y ago
    That's the issue I take with the "phonebook" defense. It justifies doxing people by collecting and connecting publicly available information online. All the information is out there, it's all on a phone book, your email was published online, and so on, but the end result is clearly bad so something in the process should be handled more carefully.