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My paranoid brain says: Digital iron curtain. Google is already lying about search results. Big time politically driven search results. Same with Bing.
For phone numbers I see similar pushes from Discord. Amazon asked for my phone number for 2 factor auth. I am okay with that for something with money behind it though. -
Forced phone number registration tends to backfire. It's certainly nothing new.
Back <2010 mexico tried to cut down on drug trafficking & fake kidnapping/extortion being committed from burners of inmates by forcing all cell phones to be registered...
Result:
Tens of thousands of #s registered under Felipe Calderón-- the, then current, president of Mexico.
Too old?
I live in Michigan (USA). During COVID, our governor, gretchen whitmer, started unilaterally making up 'laws' (most Americans dont realise basic shit like a state governor cant actually do this)... to prove how proactive/clever she was.
Perfect example was back when restaurants were allowed to open back up. She made the brilliant pseudo 'law' that every restaurant 'must' (if unaware how laws work) have all customers sign a log with their name and phone# incase of outbreak.
Several ver. of 'the gretch' + a # connected to her appeared. I ofc didnt touch the likely infected pen/paper but signed as Felipe Calderón. -
@hjk101 you forgot the best part of long-term phone numbers-- family plans.
Even when it's supposedly not connected to anything/anyone else, you can trace most numbers back to the initial service provider, and the other numbers/identities that were created at the same time. Nowadays there's lots of fun tracks due to minors having cell phones then becoming adults.
It gets more fun when they change carriers and/or plans... like to get a discount for joining a friend/bf or gf's/etc contract. Many are even simpler than that due to human error. My brother (4yrs older and avoided) messed up the 'free' device rotation by taking my upgrade over a decade ago. So my number sometimes shows as my mother and his as my name due to a mistake a verizon employee made when using 'the cloud' to transfer his data... sending me tons of his confidential work data and him a few dozen random-ish contacts of mine. -
@awesomeest when restaurants tried that in Idaho we wrote our Governors name and phone number down. He went to a lot of restaurants that year.
As far as I understand law, lockdowns were illegal in the USA. -
@Demolishun yup... and here in Michigan, we had the pseudo 'law' of wearing a mask/face covering and a bunch of rotating conditions like max occupancy.
Though COVID typically wouldnt be dangerous for a late 20s person, I'm unfortunately unique. My immune system is idiopathically fucked up. Aside from having idiopathic high-grade fevers(and hives) and anecdotally shitty defenses to basic colds/etc, im a medical marvel.
For example: Years ago i had Roseola Meningitis.
Roseola (aka human herpes virus 6) is typically something that everyone in basic society contracted at 6mo-2yrs old. Itsa mild fever/rosey cheeks that goes away within a day or so. Only recorded cases of it causing any remarkable issue for an adult, are either AIDS or blood cancer paitents. i have neither.
mentioned this cuz despite my likely demise @covid, i still know these practices are asinine. Social distancing=ok, face coverings= spreads faster, esp as covid vectors are smaller than filters aside from kn95s+ -
@Demolishun
tl;dr:
My stance on a lot can be easily inferred from seeing/googling my home. 1.06 sq acres, in the middle of a corn field.
I'm only a couple miles from 2 tourist attractions (a large outlet mall and frankenmuth), on a major road, but also in the middle of nowhere. Intentionally no neighbours... just me and my doggo, boomie... plus some statues, dragon, wizard, gargoyles, etc.
Related Rants
Privacy is a legend
For some reason, Google really, really, really wants to know peoples' phone numbers.
Of course, they say it is "only to protect us even more". But if the Twitter phone number misuse incident tells us anything, Google could change their mind at any time.
Around 2012, Google started begging people for their phone numbers upon login, but did not lock users out yet: https://groovypost.com/unplugged/... .
At some point, likely in the late 2010s, Google started locking people out of their accounts until they disclose their phone numbers. This is very unethical. Twitter already did it earlier (around 2016). Many countries' governments outlawed burner phones and people need to disclose their identity to acquire a phone number, as often under the pretext of "fighting terrorism". Surely not for mass-surveillance, am I right? ( https://comparitech.com/blog/... )
Since a few years, Google demands a phone verification for every newly created account. Honestly, that is still better than holding peoples' existing accounts hostage until they disclose a phone number, since locking people out of their accounts a while after creation causes them to lose access to their data.
Of course, people should store any data they do not wish to lose locally. Online services are not personal archives.
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privacy