6 ms·

I actually contacted the California AG to get a refund from another AI company after they failed to refund me. The AG office followed up and I got my refund. W

I actually contacted the California AG to get a refund from another AI company after they failed to refund me. The AG office followed up and I got my refund. Worth my time to file because we should stop letting companies get away with this stuff where they show up with more requirements after paying. Separately they also do not need my phone number after having my name, address and credit card. Has anyone got info on why they are taking everyone’s phone number?

jazzyjackson 1y ago
(having no insider info:) Because it can be used as a primary key ID across aggregated marketing databases including your voting history / party affiliation, income levels, personality and risk profiles etc etc etc. If a company wants to, and your data hygiene hasn't been tip top, your phone number is a pointer to a ton of intimate if not confidential data. Twitter was fined $150 million for asking for phone numbers under pretense of "protecting your account" or whatever but they actually used it for ad targeting. >> Wednesday's 9th Circuit decision grew out of revelations that between 2013 and 2019, X mistakenly incorporated users' email addresses and phone numbers into an ad platform that allows companies to use their own marketing lists to target ads on the social platform. >> In 2022, the Federal Trade Commission fined X $150 million over the privacy gaffe. >> That same year, Washington resident Glen Morgan brought a class-action complaint against the company. He alleged that the ad-targeting glitch violated a Washington law prohibiting anyone from using “fraudulent, deceptive, or false means” to obtain telephone records of state residents. >> X urged Dimke to dismiss Morgan's complaint for several reasons. Among other arguments, the company argued merely obtaining a user's phone number from him or her doesn't violate the state pretexting law, which refers to telephone “records.” >> “If the legislature meant for 'telephone record' to include something as basic as the user’s own number, it surely would have said as much,” X argued in a written motion. https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/405501/None https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/405501/None
- azinman2 1y ago
  OpenAI doesn’t (currently) sell ads. I really cannot see a world where they’re wanting to sell ads to their API users only? It’s not like you need a phone number to use ChatGPT. To me the obvious example is fraud/abuse protection.
  - hnaccount_rng 1y ago
    They don’t need to. It’s totally sufficient that they can correlate your chat history with your identity. That makes other identifiers more valuable, if they can extract your interests
    - brookst 1y ago
      It’s a good conspiracy theory, but of course it’s scoped to only ChatGPT users who are also developers and using specifically the o3 model via API. So if it is a conspiracy, it’s a fairly non-ambitious one.
    - cmenge 1y ago
      The typical use case of an API is not that you personally use it. I have hundreds of clients all go through my API key, and in most cases they themselves are companies who have n clients.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
    > It’s not like you need a phone number to use ChatGPT. I’m pretty sure you do. Claude too. The only chatbot company I’ve made an account with is Mistral specifically because a phone number was not a registration requirement.
    - ax0ar 1y ago
      They also require it now.
  - prmoustache 1y ago
    The fact they don't sell ads doesn't mean they are not in the business of selling users data to third parties. Also Netflix wasn't initially selling ads and there you have after increasing the price of their plans drastically in the last few years the ad supported subscription is probably the #1 plans because most people aren't willing to shed 15 to 25usd/€ every month to watch content that is already littered with ads.
- sgarland 1y ago
  Tangential: please do not use a phone number as a PK. Aside from the nightmare of normalizing them, there is zero guarantee that someone will keep the same number.
  - ponector 1y ago
    Even better: phone numbers are redistributed after some time of inactivity.
  - godelski 1y ago
    Also fun fact, people mistype and mistranscribe data. Some people even... put down fake phone numbers because they don't want to be tracked! I would think in a world where we constantly get spam calls and texts that people would understand that a phone number is not a good PKI. I mean we literally don't answer calls from unknown numbers because of this. How is it that we can only look at these things in one direction but not the other?
pembrook 1y ago
Source: have dealt with fraud at scale before. Phone number is the only way to reliably stop MOST abuse on a freemium product that doesn't require payment/identity verification upfront. You can easily block VOIP numbers and ensure the person connected to this number is paying for an actual phone plan, which cuts down dramatically on bogus accounts. Hence why even Facebook requires a unique, non-VOIP phone number to create an account these days. I'm sure this comment will get downvoted in favor of some other conspiratorial "because they're going to secretly sell my data!" tinfoil post (this is HN of course). But my explanation is the actual reason. I would love if I could just use email to signup for free accounts everywhere still, but it's just too easily gamed at scale.
- SheinH 1y ago
  The discussion wasn't about freemium products though. Someone mentioned that they paid 20 bucks for OpenAI's API already and then they were asked for more verification.
- pixxel 1y ago
  [dead]
- LexGray 1y ago
  On the flip side it makes a company seem sparklingly inept when they use VOIP as a method to filter valid users. I haven’t done business with companies like Netflix or Uber because I don’t feel like paying AT&T a cut for identity verification. There are plenty of other methods like digital licenses which are both more secure and with better privacy protections.
  - pembrook 1y ago
    I wish we could all agree on a better way of auth -- but unfortunately this is all we have. Asking normal people to do anything outside of phone number or email (or 'login with [other account based on phone number or email]' for auth is basically impossible.
- exceptione 1y ago
giancarlostoro 1y ago
Thank you for this comment… a relative of mine spent a ton of money on an AI product that never came a license he cannot use. I told him to contact his states AG just in case.

jazzyjackson 1y ago

(having no insider info:) Because it can be used as a primary key ID across aggregated marketing databases including your voting history / party affiliation, income levels, personality and risk profiles etc etc etc. If a company wants to, and your data hygiene hasn't been tip top, your phone number is a pointer to a ton of intimate if not confidential data. Twitter was fined $150 million for asking for phone numbers under pretense of "protecting your account" or whatever but they actually used it for ad targeting. >> Wednesday's 9th Circuit decision grew out of revelations that between 2013 and 2019, X mistakenly incorporated users' email addresses and phone numbers into an ad platform that allows companies to use their own marketing lists to target ads on the social platform. >> In 2022, the Federal Trade Commission fined X $150 million over the privacy gaffe. >> That same year, Washington resident Glen Morgan brought a class-action complaint against the company. He alleged that the ad-targeting glitch violated a Washington law prohibiting anyone from using “fraudulent, deceptive, or false means” to obtain telephone records of state residents. >> X urged Dimke to dismiss Morgan's complaint for several reasons. Among other arguments, the company argued merely obtaining a user's phone number from him or her doesn't violate the state pretexting law, which refers to telephone “records.” >> “If the legislature meant for 'telephone record' to include something as basic as the user’s own number, it surely would have said as much,” X argued in a written motion. https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/405501/None https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/405501/None

azinman2 1y ago
OpenAI doesn’t (currently) sell ads. I really cannot see a world where they’re wanting to sell ads to their API users only? It’s not like you need a phone number to use ChatGPT. To me the obvious example is fraud/abuse protection.
- hnaccount_rng 1y ago
  They don’t need to. It’s totally sufficient that they can correlate your chat history with your identity. That makes other identifiers more valuable, if they can extract your interests
  - brookst 1y ago
    It’s a good conspiracy theory, but of course it’s scoped to only ChatGPT users who are also developers and using specifically the o3 model via API. So if it is a conspiracy, it’s a fairly non-ambitious one.
  - cmenge 1y ago
    The typical use case of an API is not that you personally use it. I have hundreds of clients all go through my API key, and in most cases they themselves are companies who have n clients.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
  > It’s not like you need a phone number to use ChatGPT. I’m pretty sure you do. Claude too. The only chatbot company I’ve made an account with is Mistral specifically because a phone number was not a registration requirement.
  - ax0ar 1y ago
    They also require it now.
- prmoustache 1y ago
  The fact they don't sell ads doesn't mean they are not in the business of selling users data to third parties. Also Netflix wasn't initially selling ads and there you have after increasing the price of their plans drastically in the last few years the ad supported subscription is probably the #1 plans because most people aren't willing to shed 15 to 25usd/€ every month to watch content that is already littered with ads.
sgarland 1y ago
Tangential: please do not use a phone number as a PK. Aside from the nightmare of normalizing them, there is zero guarantee that someone will keep the same number.
- ponector 1y ago
  Even better: phone numbers are redistributed after some time of inactivity.
- godelski 1y ago
  Also fun fact, people mistype and mistranscribe data. Some people even... put down fake phone numbers because they don't want to be tracked! I would think in a world where we constantly get spam calls and texts that people would understand that a phone number is not a good PKI. I mean we literally don't answer calls from unknown numbers because of this. How is it that we can only look at these things in one direction but not the other?

pembrook 1y ago

Source: have dealt with fraud at scale before. Phone number is the only way to reliably stop MOST abuse on a freemium product that doesn't require payment/identity verification upfront. You can easily block VOIP numbers and ensure the person connected to this number is paying for an actual phone plan, which cuts down dramatically on bogus accounts. Hence why even Facebook requires a unique, non-VOIP phone number to create an account these days. I'm sure this comment will get downvoted in favor of some other conspiratorial "because they're going to secretly sell my data!" tinfoil post (this is HN of course). But my explanation is the actual reason. I would love if I could just use email to signup for free accounts everywhere still, but it's just too easily gamed at scale.

SheinH 1y ago
The discussion wasn't about freemium products though. Someone mentioned that they paid 20 bucks for OpenAI's API already and then they were asked for more verification.
pixxel 1y ago
[dead]
LexGray 1y ago
On the flip side it makes a company seem sparklingly inept when they use VOIP as a method to filter valid users. I haven’t done business with companies like Netflix or Uber because I don’t feel like paying AT&T a cut for identity verification. There are plenty of other methods like digital licenses which are both more secure and with better privacy protections.
- pembrook 1y ago
  I wish we could all agree on a better way of auth -- but unfortunately this is all we have. Asking normal people to do anything outside of phone number or email (or 'login with [other account based on phone number or email]' for auth is basically impossible.
exceptione 1y ago

giancarlostoro 1y ago

Thank you for this comment… a relative of mine spent a ton of money on an AI product that never came a license he cannot use. I told him to contact his states AG just in case.