It was earlier - the 1984 movie (Terminator) had the scene where he rips out the page from the phone book, looking for the Sarah Connors listed there. :)

K-anonymity in action. (The only thing you need to do is change your name to someone else's name.)

I believe the LGR channel has shown some DOS programs from before 1990 that had the entire catalogue of the US phonebook available in a neat DOS UI, where you just choose a location/state (or non at all) then enter a letter and it would filter every entry on the chosen filter...

(Name was ProPhone 1993, so not really pre 90's) https://youtu.be/yBupNdYe08g?t=1078

The ones in Australia where one way - you could search for a name and it would give you a phone and address... but if you a programmer, you could read the database directly, so search on a phone number and get back the address and name, or search an address and get back name and phone number.

There were a few services in the early 2000s doing this, they were called Reverse Grey Pages

I think we actually had that, bought on a whim by my Dad at a computer show in the 90's. We had some fun looking up how many people with certain first/last names were in the US, but didn't have much other use for it.

And funnily enough, family members of mine have started multiple businesses named A-1 something. :)

Do you know why they used A-1 rather then A+? I've always wondered, but never knew anyone to ask.

I don't know, but I'm also not entirely sure how phone books sorted back in the day (they predate ASCII by quite a bit), or if it was even consistent across locales (probably, at least before the baby bells), so for all I know A- sorted before A+, and nobody wants to be just A-.

Yep, they were called Reverse Grey Pages. You would buy the CD, and then just read the database yourself. This allowed you to type an address and you could get their phone number etc

Yep, they were called Reverse Pages. You would buy the CD, and then just read the database yourself. This allowed you to type an address and you could get their phone number etc

I Denmark phone books had postal address. Think this goes for many contries i think. You could even call directory inquiry and ask for someone's address and they would give it to you.