I had the same feeling. It seems the two things here in question is my phone number (which luckily I never gave fb), and my email which it seems every spammer in the world already seems to have?

I noticed this even back when phonebooks were a thing that a 'private' number was not something random people should call. Yet the reality is that number is kind of public but not. If you did accidently call one you would get 'how did you get this number' from the person you called.

Judging by the amount of phone calls I get these days. They have also already correlated a huge number of these. Short of me changing my number every few years there is not much I can do. I am getting cold calls on property I bought 20+ years ago and them asking if I want to sell.

At the bottom of this though is the 'data' these companies are scouring on us. Then cross correlating it. I have for the past few years come to the conclusion data is harmful to keep for both the end users and the companies that do it. Companies like google and fb seem to be of a very different opinion. Companies should be going into collecting data with 'how do we get rid of it after some period of time', not lets buy more HD to keep it on.

> Man sometimes I think people forget phone books existed for a long time.

If the notion were introduced today, nobody would tolerate them. That they once existed is hardly an argument that such things are a good idea.

Not to mention that all people I knew growing up opted to have their numbers removed from the phone books. People don’t want their number to be visible to everyone.

And you had to pay monthly for that 'service' -- for them to NOT publish your number.

the phone book are completely a different animal. As example they are almost useless to reverse lookup a number...

Reverse phone books were a thing. They were harder to get but libraries had them.

I can see a few (a lot) of differences between a phone book and Facebook in this analogy.

well yea, they aren't "really" the same thing. It was just phone numbers weren't considered all that private back then.¯\_(ツ)_/¯ just a hot take

Back then you could ask the phone company to unlist your number... and they actually did it.

Also, back then, it wasn't feasible for random people online to put your information into endless databases to be called on repeat by auto-dialers. Back when phone books were prevalent was not the same world. It is an excellent point that phone numbers (and even addresses!) were considered public for a long time. However, I think there is plenty reason for the conscious consumer to want their number to be more private, in light of where we are today. Today, someone can use your phone number and address to steal your identity, harass you, use it to get more information, etc.