Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: In 2024 what's the best way to manage contacts?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 62 posts

Re: Ask HN: In 2024 what's the best way to manage contacts?

#41

Post by devjab »

sandreas wrote: post #6

Google may be a privacy issue... So I would love to have the possibility to prevent anyone putting my info in their contacts in Google. I personally use a paid E-Mail service (mailbox.org) and a self hosted nextcloud. The APP myphoneexplorer can be used to sync offline.

I don’t know if it is like this in many countries but in Denmark we have a public registry of addresses, and I’d assume Google (and others) simply pull from that. There are ways to avoid being on the public list but most people aren’t doing that, and if your parents didn’t do it for you then you’ll have been in the registry at one point.

I guess it won’t tell big tech who your friends are. At least until you talk with them regularly through online channels.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024 what's the best way to manage contacts?

#42

Post by sandreas »

devjab wrote: post #41
sandreas wrote: post #6

Google may be a privacy issue... So I would love to have the possibility to prevent anyone putting my info in their contacts in Google. I personally use a paid E-Mail service (mailbox.org) and a self hosted nextcloud. The APP myphoneexplorer can be used to sync offline.

I don’t know if it is like this in many countries but in Denmark we have a public registry of addresses, and I’d assume Google (and others) simply pull from that. There are ways to avoid being on the public list but most people aren’t doing that, and if your parents didn’t do it for you then you’ll have been in the registry at one point. I guess it won’t tell big tech who your friends are. At least until you talk wit…

I'm not afraid of having parts of my information online in general. Having a website often needs an imprint with a big part of your data. It's more like the information only friends and family know of and which are way more important in many senses.

- phone - this is kind of ok, because phone spam is less common

- email - to prevent spam

- birthday - this one is quite critical, because here in germany it is a common way to verify authentication on phone calls by insurance companies

- job-details, contact relationships, etc.

I doubt that these are all in the public registry.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024 what's the best way to manage contacts?

#43

Post by froggerexpert »

CardDAV.

I host this end-to-end encrypted on https://www.etesync.com/ .

I sync to my Android phone with the etesync app.

I use the Android contacts app to manage details.

I don't keep detailed records. Just contact details, how I know them, name of children, etc.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024 what's the best way to manage contacts?

#44

Post by froggerexpert »

enasterosophes wrote: post #38
westcort wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding a text file. I keep addresses this way, too. So does my father. So did my grandfather. I have their files, as well.

Do you mind if I ask what format you've settled on? Having a system evolve over multiple generations means you must have pruned out all the bad ways to do it. I've got this vision of a Neal Stephenson story which will never be written about a family in the 22nd century that has kept all their personal contacts in Git for over 100 years ...

Consider https://www.gnu.org/software/recutils/

Plain text, but with querying, and likely exporters/importers into calendars.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024 what's the best way to manage contacts?

#45

Post by yochem »

A bit off topic but I absolutely HATE that the Contacts app in ios feels like a one-day hobby project. How is it still so america-centric? Why can't I sort my contacts in Dutch sorting order? Why can't I add other important dates (like their day of death) that also shows up in my calendar?

Re: Ask HN: In 2024 what's the best way to manage contacts?

#47

Post by bjoli »

LinuxBender wrote: post #9

I can not speak for others or the consensus but since the 90's I have always just used a plain text file with simple delimiters in a format that I understand so that I can massage the output format to match whatever needs the information. This has worked great for me and is simple to back up and newer versions make this easy to get a good compression ratio of a single tarball of every version . Multiple files as many…

I have a recfile for this. It is pretty stellar.

Re: Ask HN: In 2024 what's the best way to manage contacts?

#48

Post by jokab »

digdugdirk wrote: post #25
zxexz wrote: post #22

I have a master sqlite file with an arbitrary schema that is constantly evolving. I go hard with the constraints and primary keys - so hard, in fact, it's nigh-impossible to add a new contact without cascading changes. I'm always eager to keep my contacts, so this has kept my pretty sharp with sqlite.

I can't tell if you're joking or not, but I sympathize regardless.

This made me chuckle a bit. Here, take my upvote.
Post reply on HN