When I was a kid, my parent's phone number was 6 digits long. You can memorise 11 digits of course, I did this aged 10 with digits of π, but also I'm a nerd.

One of my memories was losing track of where my mum was when we went shopping. She was right behind me, but 5-6 year old me panicked and ran out of the main doors.

There was a school trip to teach us personal safety issues (not sure the age, I'm going to say 11 with low confidence), and one of the tasks was (to the entire group) "Go along this corridor to meet the policeman, Officer FooBar"; we went along the corridor, someone not in uniform asked us where we were going, one of the group said "to meet Officer FooBar", and this un-uniformed person said "I'm Officer FooBar, wait in this room". Then he left and the real Officer FooBar came in and asked us to explain the situation, and that we'd been fooled because we'd volunteered too much information. (The fake Officer FooBar was also an officer, but one who was pretending to be a Bad Man™ who was pretending to be an officer).

The UK school system, at the time I went through it, the year before you finished you were sent to a "trident work experience" thing for a week (I think to keep them out of the way of those doing exams) — mine was to be a teaching assistant in a primary school. The kids all called me "Mrs Ben" because to them "Mrs" was the title given to all teachers and they didn't get the difference between family names and given names.

Aren't phone numbers longer than they used to be?

Yes, in 1920 they were shorter.

We didn't need an area code for much of the time I was growing up in the 90s in the Atlanta area. It was a huge media thing when we got a new code and finally had to start thinking about it. We had an area code (404) but nobody used it until that pesky 770 (1995) complicated life for some, and 678 (1998) later messed it up for everyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Georgia_area_codes

Of course, they're increasingly meaningless now that everyone has cell phones and gets to pick an area code.

My parent's number growing was initially 77099, though it later became 577099 when the numbering system was tinkered with to allow for growth and efficiency at the exchanges. This was only as far back as the 90s, and such short numbers still work for landline-to-landline calls today. I don't have a landline, and if I did I'm not home enough for it to be a useful way o get hold of me. My numbers now are 11 digits, not as easy to drum into the head of a kid I expect (I don't speak from direct experience: child-free and planning to stay that way, but I know many people with kids at various ages).

OK, technically my parent's number was 10 digits rather than 5 because it was <areacode>577099, but that didn't matter as I'd almost always be local to that code, and if not could state my home town if talking to an adult who was doing the calling (or if I'd dialled the operator number, which I'd need to do anyway for a revere-charges call) and they'd know that bit.

It's 2024. It's not likely you're arguing with someone who is 104 years old.

I'm less than 50 and remember 5-digit numbers being the norm in the 80s. 3 digit might have still been around in the 70s iirc.

Wait until we'll be assigned IPv6 as phone number.

Dude come on

Your no nonsense suggestions aren't appreciated, we like sending our kids locations to the NSA in real time here.

Is there any reason to suspect that tracking apps like find my are correlated with government surveillance?

For years the government used cell phone data to track locations without it being known. Why wouldn't they use a more reliable way of doing it? Is there any reason to NOT suspect it?

My question was about FindMy in particular as opposed to other ways of obtaining the data.

Yes. The NSA is collecting any data it can get access to.

Would you suspect a known burglar of wanting to rob your house? Well the NSA violated privacy of hundreds of millions of people. They deserve all the suspicion and no forgiveness.