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Posted by Adam H. Kerman on April 10, 2009, 10:00 am
One thing the Internet does well is provide access to databases.
For the last 10 years or so, it was possible to get white pages listings
from incumbent local telephone companies on line. anywho.com, for
instance, started out as a database for Ameritech states. GTE had one,
as did each of the baby bells. With consolidation, these databases got
bigger.
In the ILEC's service territory, the listings came from their own
databases. Now, they might have been the listings as they existed at the
time the latest telephone directory closed, but this was decent
information, less likely to be out of date. Typically, the database
would not have disconnected numbers, even if new movers were missing.
One by one, these databases vanished from the Internet. Generally, Intelius
either purchased the domain names but left the front end in place or the
domain is still owned by the phone company but supplying Intelius data.
Intelius is a data consolidator, purchasing any database it finds. The
information is consolidated with fuzzy matches, so it's hardly unusual
that information from multiple people is linked with something in common
in the matching criteria. Generally, the results are somewhat useless.
Recently I found a phone number briefly assigned to a relative at a
location she never ended up moving in to. The phone line wasn't supposed
to have been activated (it never terminated at the location) but it was
for a short time. At Intelius, it's listed in her name at another
address she has no association with. I'm sure the phone number had been
assigned to someone at that address either before or after she had it.
Intelius makes its money from paid information searches, so the fuzziest
possible matching is their business model. I can't imagine that their
paid searches provide better accuracy. In fact I'd imagine it's probably
much worse, with more hits on additional databases. I've never used it.
lycos's whowhere.com is a front end to ussearch.com, an Intelius
competitor.
The only remaining non-Intelius database is whitepages.com. Most of
their information is from databases prepared from printed telephone
directories input by third parties, so it's out of date at about the
same rate as a telephone directory not published by the local telephone
company. Some white pages searches provided by the big phone companies,
like Verizon, are actually front ends for a search through their
database.
Might as well resume using printed telephone directories. The number of
published listings is way down, as the ILEC doesn't carry all telephone
numbers from CLEC's, but at least what you find stands a better chance
of being accurate.
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Posted by MC on April 11, 2009, 9:02 am
Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> Might as well resume using printed telephone directories. The number of
> published listings is way down, as the ILEC doesn't carry all telephone
> numbers from CLEC's, but at least what you find stands a better chance
> of being accurate.
I have started encountering younger people who don't know what a printed
telephone directory *is*.
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Posted by David Clayton on April 12, 2009, 1:15 am
On Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:02:16 -0400, MC wrote:
> Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>
>> Might as well resume using printed telephone directories. The number of
>> published listings is way down, as the ILEC doesn't carry all telephone
>> numbers from CLEC's, but at least what you find stands a better chance
>> of being accurate.
>
> I have started encountering younger people who don't know what a printed
> telephone directory *is*.
Not everybody gets arrested........ ;-)
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
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Posted by David Kaye on April 11, 2009, 9:03 am
> Might as well resume using printed telephone directories. The number of
> published listings is way down, as the ILEC doesn't carry all telephone
> numbers from CLEC's, but at least what you find stands a better chance
> of being accurate.
It's impossible to find my phone number via such searches. I prefer
it this way. I get nearly zero junk phone calls.
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Posted by Steve Stone on April 12, 2009, 1:08 am
>> Might as well resume using printed telephone directories.
In my residential area phone books are dropped off in bags at the foot
of the rural mailbox or thrown to the middle of the driveway. Many are
never picked up by their intended victims, left to decompose outdoors.
Part of the problem is we get so many phone books.. 6 or 7 at last
count. Two or three from Frontier, the regional telco, more from
Verizon which does not serve my area but serves adjacent areas, and
more from independent yellow page distributors. None of them are
accurate.
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> published listings is way down, as the ILEC doesn't carry all telephone
> numbers from CLEC's, but at least what you find stands a better chance
> of being accurate.