Contributors

Thursday, April 19, 2018

How Did These God Damned Spammers Get My Cell Number?

In our region, the Twin Cities, there are four area codes (612, 651, 763, and 952). I live in 952 but my cell phone's number is in 651, which is the other side of town. Most of the people I know are in the 612, 952 and 763 area codes.

Most every afternoon I get a call on my cell phone from a number in the same exchange. The few times I've answered these calls they have been spam calls for direct marketers or businesses I've never dealt with (auto glass dealers).

The number displayed when I get these calls isn't the caller's real number: it's fake. Direct marketers spoof the caller ID, using a number in the same area code and exchange to make you think that someone living in your neighborhood is calling you. But since I don't know anyone in that exchange of the 651 area code, I know immediately that the call is spam and I don't want to talk to them.

I've given my cell phone number only to friends, family and only recently the doctor's office. I used to give out my landline to companies that required it, but we recently dropped the landline. Now I use a Google Voice number for companies that I never want to talk to. So no companies should have my cell number.

But how did these spammers get hold of my phone number? The same way Cambridge Analytica got hold of 80 million people's data without their permission:

From Facebook, or some other app that one of my friends installed on their phone.

When you install the Facebook app one of the things you give it access to is your contact list. That means Facebook knows your phone number and, worse, the phone numbers of everyone in your contact list.

Does Facebook sell the phone numbers it harvests from our contact lists? I don't know. There's nothing stopping them from doing so. Google also has my number, since I have an Android phone, and Apple has the phone number of everyone with an iPhone.

It's possible that Google sold my number to spammers, or Apple sold the contact list of one of my friends. Or maybe it was a company that has an app that purports to do one thing, but exists solely harvest contact lists to sell to spammers.

And that's the problem. It's one thing for Facebook to sell the personal data of Facebook users. But Facebook and companies like it have access to mountains of data about the people that Facebook users know, and there's nothing to stop them from selling those people's data as well.

If your reaction is, "Pish, tosh. What's new about this? Phone companies used to publish big fat books with everyone's phone number in them."

The difference is twofold: first, these contact lists allow companies to create networks of people, to figure out who knows who. Phone books didn't list the phone numbers of all your friends as well.

Second, Facebook has access to all the information in your contact list, including physical addresses, email addresses and any other notes you may keep on your acquaintances. Like their birthdays, or the code for your friend's home security system so you can feed their cat. Some people might even store their bank account number or other sensitive information in their contact list.

Clearly we need legislation that limits what companies like Facebook, Google and Apple can do with this sensitive information, and controls on apps to prevent them from accessing information on your friends without their permission.

No comments: