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Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

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Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

#61

Post by sbr464 »

jfaat wrote: post #59
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #16

I 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…

Since you know the number, have you considered reaching out to its current owner to coordinate passing off the code?

That’s actually a pretty popular phishing method currently.

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

#62

Post by segfaultbuserr »

jfaat wrote: post #59
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #16

I 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…

Since you know the number, have you considered reaching out to its current owner to coordinate passing off the code?

Good idea! I'll try. Thanks! The number may or may not be recycled, in case it's not recycled, it would simply be a NULL number. Wish me luck...

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

#63

Post by reaperducer »

lxmcneill wrote: post #7

"Users will only store phone numbers in your product's phone number fields" Not entirely sure what this point is trying to achieve. Do you read a birthday field expecting a phone number 99% of the time? Should you read a phone number field expecting an email address? And at what point in that process did you decide that not having data validation on both ends was a good idea?

If you’re making an address book app, don’t expect people to put what you expect in the fields you give them just because you label the fields a particular way.

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

#64

Post by krick »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #16

I 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 the planet uses the phone almost solely for the purpose of having a pocket-size internet access device anyway. But making phone numbers a passport of sorts (a proprietary, insecure, easy to lose passport, over which you have basically no control) is the worst, the most stupid/evil idea ever. And there's no way around it, it is used by (supposedly "secure") whatsapp, telegram, google, facebook, every fucking pizza delivery service and, well, basically everything else. And I hate every single person responsible for helping that happen.

Seriously, I would do everything I can to destroy fucking phone numbers, but I have no idea how can we stop this madness.

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

#65

Post by clort »

lxmcneill wrote: post #7

"Users will only store phone numbers in your product's phone number fields" Not entirely sure what this point is trying to achieve. Do you read a birthday field expecting a phone number 99% of the time? Should you read a phone number field expecting an email address? And at what point in that process did you decide that not having data validation on both ends was a good idea?

So since I got a phone I have always used it as my address book (yeah, I export and back it up). In the early days Android was pretty nice. You can enter all sorts of things in there; multiple addresses, numbers, company information, birthdays of friends or other important dates etc..

But latterly, Android just won't do birthday dates. Oh sure, the dates are still in there and get exported from the database but there is no way to enter the information or look at it on the phone (I use BirthdayAdapter from F-Droid which causes a reminder on the day)

I expect that some people just put the birthday of their friend in a phone number field. In fact I'm pretty sure that millions of people just use random fields for their own purposes full stop, they just don't care about any of that.

So the article is saying that it is their phone, don't try to control them. If information is in the field and you can't parse it? You store it and export it as received but otherwise ignore it..

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

#66

Post by segfaultbuserr »

krick wrote: post #64
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #16

I 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…

anti-spam, they said... and you also have this (vomit),

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18085580

Yes Facebook is using your 2FA phone number to target you with ads

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

#67

Post by TeMPOraL »

realusername wrote: post #5

I 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.

Yup. Another example: Poland dropped a "0" prefix from area codes for landlines some ten years ago.

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

#68

Post by TeMPOraL »

sly010 wrote: post #29

Programmers don't actually believe in such falsehoods, nor do they just decide to be lazy about implementation. In fact if anything programmers are generally more aware of such things. A better name for these lists would be "falsehoods businesses insist on despite their engineers warnings".

Yup.

I mean, every programmer I know considers stuff like this to be very interesting trivia to learn and apply. But even if you know this stuff, putting the knowledge to use often involves a series of battles against your PMs and managers and maybe even customers, who either don't know it, have their own vision, or just follow what everyone else does.

(Getting a product to work correctly is as much an exercise of diplomacy and ego management as it is a matter of technical skills.)

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

#69

Post by TeMPOraL »

pkaye wrote: post #50
saagarjha wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put symbols in phone numbers.

So basically phone numbers are one or more text fields.

Yup. And unless your product is a PBX, a phone number should be an opaque blob to you.

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

#70

Post by chrisbolt »

newscracker wrote: post #37

> An individual has a phone number > Some people do not own phones, or do not wish to provide you with their telephone number when asked. Do not require a user to provide a phone number unless it is essential, and whenever possible try and provide a fallback to accommodate these users. Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram are spectacular design failures on this point because they assume that every person has a phone number…

>Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram are spectacular design failures on this point because they assume that every person has a phone number and also that every person has their own private (non-shared) and unique phone number.

No, most people have a phone number and for most people that's their own phone number. That was a tradeoff for them.

>Facebook, Google, etc., require a phone number for verification and believe that it’s sufficiently adequate to thwart spammers.

I am sure that it is one of the most effective ways to thwart spammers, but to say that it's all they do is laughable. What's an alternative, email address? Throwaway emails are a dime a dozen.

>None of the companies mentioned above would agree that excluding people is a goal for them, but they’ve made it so.

They've made excluding people a goal? Are you serious?

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