Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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what do companies do with your phone number ? (feddit.it)

submitted 1 year ago by FunzioneSperimentale@feddit.it to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I have a question, what do companies do with your phone number ? can they trace who you are and what you do ?

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[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago

One of the more legitimate uses is to have a decent way of identifying humans. Most humans only have a very limited amount of phone numbers (usually exactly one) and even extreme cases can only acquire a rather limited amount of them.

Contrast that to most other identification methods such as email or online accounts where a singular entity can create limitless amounts of them, that's quite a lot better.

Obviously most companies also abuse your phone number for malicious purposes such as tracking, profiling, spam etc.