Evil: A site that displays the phone numbers of random Facebook users

http://www.tomscott.com/evil/

by ssclafani • 16 years ago

61 15 16 years ago

Once upon a time, there used to be these books that contained everyone's phone number. They called them the "White Pages". Oh the humanity!

ynoclo• 16 years ago

No, not everyone's phone number. You could opt to have an "unlisted" number, and it was easy to check whether or not the book was revealing your number to the world.

philwelch• 16 years ago

You can (easily) do that on Facebook, too. It even lets you view your profile from other perspectives. And it's even easier than calling the phone company to ask for an unlisted number.

marcusbooster• 16 years ago

And it didn't have pictures next to the number making it easy to target certain demographics.

awa• 16 years ago

yup, having a photo associated with a phone number is more concerning than a name. In this case you can actually say, Think of all the children!

petercooper2• 16 years ago

Or an associated set of "Like"s - reasonable indicators of a person's outlook.

mdolon2• 16 years ago

Do phone books have cell phone numbers now? (I haven't picked one up in ages) I suspect the majority of FB users are posting their cell numbers.

X-Istence3• 16 years ago

So, open the website in the webkit inspector, go to the script tab, open the console and paste this to get the full numbers. Just to make it just a tad bit more evil!

    function parseNumber(num) {
     
      var onlyMildlyEvil = false;
      var digits = num.toString().replace(/[^0-9]/g, '');
      var parsed = '';
          
      if (digits.match(/^0[127]\d{9}$/)) {
        // probably a UK phone number
        parsed += '(' + digits.substr(0,5) + ') ';
        parsed += digits.substr(6);
      }
      
      if (digits.match(/^[2-9]\d{9}$/)) {
        // probably a US phone number
        parsed += '(' + digits.substr(0,3) + ') ';
        parsed += digits.substr(3,3) + '-';
        parsed += digits.substr(6);
      }
      
      if (parsed.length == 0) { parsed = num; }
      
      if(onlyMildlyEvil) {
      
        parsed = "" + parsed;
        parsed = parsed.substr(0,parsed.length-3) + 'XXX';
      
      }
     
      return parsed;
     
    }

petercooper2• 16 years ago

Tom is crazily productive. There doesn't seem to be a week when he's not releasing or doing something unexpected. He recently ran as a candidate for MP in the UK general election as a pirate, http://www.madcapntom.co.uk/ (watch his campaign ad!) and had success with "Tweet Trumps" in the last two weeks: http://tweettrumps.com/

mdolon2• 16 years ago

This man is incredible, his projects page is teeming with greatness: http://www.tomscott.com/projects/. Also, maybe it's just me but the background image on Tweet Trumps is kind of trippy when reading the text on the page.

jrockway• 16 years ago

The advice about googling your phone number is interesting. Apparently this guy is using my GV phone number: http://tr.dexigner.com/turk_tasarimcilar/m_yasin_sivis.html

("OMG, now I know jrockway's phone number!!11!". Yeah, well, don't worry, I never answer the phone and the "block" button in GV is quite effective.)

X-Istence3• 16 years ago

I love Google Voice. I use it all over the place, gmail, my portfolio site, everywhere. And if people bother me, click, blocked. Simple and effective.

Evil: A site that displays the phone numbers of random Facebook users

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