The biggest widely believed programmer falsehood I run into in practice: that they are ten digits and always start with +1. It’s right up there with “all users have a US ZIP code”.
Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)
111–120 of 209 posts
Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)
#112I would personally add one (maybe I'll do a PR): Phone number formats never change for a particular country. Vietnam just removed a few months ago one digit of all the mobile phones making all the previous number recorded for the country invalid.
+1 from India. There's popular app in Bangalore that you can use to rent bicycles. I can't use it because my phone number (which has a relatively newly released starting digit series) doesn't pass their signup validation. So frustrating. It's frustrating indeed.
Related: email validation that doesn’t allow for + in usernames or any of the newfangled hipster fad TLDs.
Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)
#113Note: USA-specific Not even 20 years ago, before any number could be ported to mobiles, landlines in some (all?) Baby Bell regions had their prefix determined by geography. In other words, you could know what "zone" a given phone number was in by its prefix. Take Silicon Valley. A (650) 960-xxxx number meant Mountain View. (408) 733-xxxx meant Sunnyvale. Etc. Zones roughly respected cities, but boundary conditions ab…
Sweet hack. :)
Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)
#114I have/had a Facebook account with a phone number. The account was left unused for a few years. Recently, I used my E-mail to reset its password, unfortunately, since the account was abandoned for a long time, the system flagged my activity as "suspicious" automatically, and asks me for confirmation using my phone number. But I no longer own that number. And from the customer Q&A forum, I realized I was not the only…
too big to be polite
The matter is more simple, Facebook users are not Facebook customers, hence no customer support. Same story with free Google accounts.
Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)
#115> googlei18n > Some people do not wish to provide you with their telephone number when asked Well, you don't say! Next in the series, “Falsehoods programmers believe about 2fa, or: just use HOTP/TOTP, dammit.”
TOTP is rather vulnerable to phishing. U2F is the current gold standard, although impossible to use on iOS, sadly.
Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)
#116I find this category of posts ("falsehoods programmers believe about X") to be patronizing and unhelpful. Most of these lists (this one included) don't give good explanations and don't have guidelines for how to avoid the problems that are highlighted. It's usually just a list of condescending gotchas.
I find these helpful when my team is designing a feature that intersects with this kind of "gotcha" area, and it sets off warnings in my mind, "I know there's something tricky about this business requirement but I can't put my finger on it...", these type of lists at least help me identify particular pitfalls, even if they don't provide solutions, so I can provide specific and scoped concerns to push back on or clari…
Yup! There are lots of things like this, where I don’t have the list memorized, but I remember that there is a non-trivial, non-obvious list of considerations to take into account when doing a certain thing in a non-fragile (and non-discriminatory) way.
A list of these lists might be useful.
Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)
#117I have/had a Facebook account with a phone number. The account was left unused for a few years. Recently, I used my E-mail to reset its password, unfortunately, since the account was abandoned for a long time, the system flagged my activity as "suspicious" automatically, and asks me for confirmation using my phone number. But I no longer own that number. And from the customer Q&A forum, I realized I was not the only…
No, as much as I hate Facebook: fuck phone numbers. The idea of using phone number as a personal identification tool is so bad, I'm struggling to believe this is not some kind of conspiracy designed for the solely purpose of mocking the user. It is bad enough that phone numbers exist at all in the eyes of the end user by the year 2019, 15 years after Skype with user-friendly logins appeared and when about a half of t…
> conspiracy designed for the solely purpose of mocking the user
slightly paraphrasing Hanlon's razor: don't attribute to a conspiracy that which is adequately explained by stupidity
> Seriously, I would do everything I can to destroy fucking phone numbers, but I have no idea how can we stop this madness.
I assume throwing away your phone isn't a solution for most people who grew up with one. Works for me though. :)
Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, as much as I hate Facebook: fuck phone numbers. The idea of using phone number as a personal identification tool is so bad, I'm struggling to believe this is not some kind of conspiracy designed for the solely purpose of mocking the user. It is bad enough that phone numbers exist at all in the eyes of the end user by the year 2019, 15 years after Skype with user-friendly logins appeared and when about a half of t…
Well, I don't have a phone - have never had a mobile phone. So..I have other problems instead I guess. But not that one.
seconded :) .. it's the best you can do for your mental health and actually "stay connected" for real!
Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, as much as I hate Facebook: fuck phone numbers. The idea of using phone number as a personal identification tool is so bad, I'm struggling to believe this is not some kind of conspiracy designed for the solely purpose of mocking the user. It is bad enough that phone numbers exist at all in the eyes of the end user by the year 2019, 15 years after Skype with user-friendly logins appeared and when about a half of t…
pro tip: Telegram requires a phone number for registration, but then you don't need a phone to use it. You can link an account to a burner phone and then you can set up a password. With that password, even if the phone number get reassigned, they can't have access to your account.
if security is a concern don't use Telegram :)
Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
pro tip: Telegram requires a phone number for registration, but then you don't need a phone to use it. You can link an account to a burner phone and then you can set up a password. With that password, even if the phone number get reassigned, they can't have access to your account.
if security is a concern don't use Telegram :)
Telegram is way safer than using a cellphone :)
But yeah, Telegram shouldn't be used for really sensitive stuff.