Ask Lemmy

I mean, that’s what phone books were.

Nah, nobody can wreck my life better than me.

Not a whole lot can be done with a first and last name and a phone number. If someone is motivated they don’t need any of this to do harm.

As an example at my job people know my first and last name and I give it to people voluntarily without knowing anything about the other person. While I don’t give out my personal phone number, I know lots of people that do. Sometimes on their business card or even email.

You may be over thinking this and just use it as a lesson to be a bit more guarded and aware of social pressure in the future.

Have you heard of swatting? Spoof a call from your number to 911 and make up something really bad sounding.

Probably not without using that information to attain additional details. Things like address, family member's names, job, can all be obtained without leaving their computer for almost no cost (or free, but with less accurate results sometimes).

After that, what they could do is really up to how much effort they put in, contrasted with how much effort you put in to preventing. A swat team could show up at your door with little effort on their part. Or if they wanted to go through the effort of social engineering/dumpster diving/remote hacking their way into enough info to steal your identity.

2FA with strong passwords at a bare minimum. And not "strong" according to the website's account creation page, actually strong (which is itself a moving target to define, and is always in debate).

Any loved ones who may have potential access to sensitive information should also be prepared similarly to avoid some of the more catch-all scams such as phishing.

Spoofing a number means they can call somebody and appears as calling from your number. In order to receive SMS or call made to your number, they would have to hijack your SIM, typically convincing your telecom provider to transfer your phone info over to theirs.

In the US, someone knowing your full name and phone number is commonplace. There is no wide-spead havoc because of this. Someone who wants to harm you would really have to be motivated to get more information from the info you gave them. This is obviously possible because of wide-spread data leaks, but does your emissary have the perseverance and the knowledge to do this?

That depends very much on which country and culture.

Not where I live as anyone can more or less look that up online for anyone. That's why I find it so fun when I hear those YouTube sponsors about how your full name and your birthday might be online, so pay this company to check for it and try to remove it.

It's not that hard to get both for most people. The phone book whitepages used to list those. There are various services that aggregate them now.

Given that it's not all havoc out there, probably not trivially.

But...by the same token, there's nothing intrinsically about knowing your physical address that would let someone do that. But...they could go firebomb your house or something.

Hello my name is Christopher l brown My phone number is 6154183400 We can test and see if anyone can do anything with that info. Please dont use this to come kill or rape me. But you can send me money via my number on like cash or chime.

Relatively speaking, there's no reason to suggest not, especially if there is flexibility of utility, perhaps to the delight of some who slanderously wish to entertain that idea toward me this month.