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AI chatbots are giving out people’s real phone numbers
(www.technologyreview.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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I don't think that it's actually providing the phone numbers that it knows are specific people.
It's generating a string of numbers that's formatted like a phone number and many of those happen to be valid. The people calling phone numbers from chatbots are the reason that all phone numbers in movies are 555-5555 or similar, because otherwise there'd be hundreds of people calling the poor person who happened to own that phone number trying to speak to James Bond personally.
The silver lining would be that you could call those people all kinds of dumb without possible recourse.
I get plenty of calls from people who can be generously described as telemarketers should I need targets outside of the usual social media folks.
Like how people were flooded with calls to Jenny, when that song came out and everyone just had to dial 8675309 lol
More recently, Mike Jones (Rapper) famously gave out his phone number in a song as well: (281)330-8004.
Why would he do that?
According to the song.
"Call me to buy cocaine" or maybe just artistic impression, who can say? Nobody if they know what's good for them.