News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here. Parent comment

Re:There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here by ben_w on Sunday November 14, 2021 @02:58PM (#29220089)
“You need a number? Ok, +44 908 …” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium-rate_telephone_number

I hear you though. I failed to receive a flight ticket because the airline accepted but could not use an address with a + before the @; and when I tried to use a website to prove my identity to get a local SIM after moving county, customer service claimed to only support Windows and Android and wouldn’t help me when I connected via a Mac and my phone was from Apple; and the local public transport app didn’t let me buy tickets when it was installed on an iPad, only on a phone; and a few days ago I got an invoice with “click here to pay” text, except the invoice is an image and there is no hyperlink.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:There may be a steep privacy cost if you park here by anjbe on Sunday November 14, 2021 @05:01PM (#29221146)
Using a premium‐rate phone number doesn’t help anything though. Like the parent mentioned, it’s not like the retailer ever actually calls the number. The problem is that advertisers use the number to correlate one person’s activity across multiple retailers and services.
[ Parent | on HN ]