dennis roberts said on 12/3/02 3:08 PM: >tell me how joe and/or mary would be able to know all the numbers from the >phone book? and, ... even if they cut and pasted every little itty bitty # >into excel and sort the numbers and find the "holes" ... that tells them >WHAT are known to be listings ... not what are known to be UNlisted >numbers ... if i find with my book ... that 8142384692 is not there ... how >do i even know 8142384692 exists? i don't
There have existed for decades so-called 'reverse' directories. Often they can be found in libraries. They may be less common now in the computer age. Reverse directories have all phone numbers listed in order of address to which they are assigned (as opposed to listed by name) with the person's name and all phone numbers listed in order and the names and addresses assigned to them. Therefore, if you know the address, you can find name and phone number. If you know the phone number, you can find name and address. I've used such a directory myself when I needed to contact a neighbor who had an unruly dog in his yard. Leaving a note on his door was not an option. Telephoning by this method was what I did. Unlisted numbers are not found in reverse directories. Gallup is not doing anything to invade the privacy of persons with unlisted numbers. Gallup randomly gets a number and calls it. They get answer, or not; get responses, or no;, they don't even know if it was unlisted or not because: (and this is crucial) Gallup doesn't maintain a telephone directory. A telephone directory changes so fast that this method is better. Using an actual telephone directory at all would mean automatic undersampling of people who move a lot, which could mean an unrepresentative sample. Buying the 'unlisted' option from the phone company simply means you are telling them to not release the unique linking of your name to a particular phone number. You may think it odd to pay for this, because we have a right to privacy. Well, we do have a right to privacy, but that right is applied to *government* intrusion into our lives. Once we agree to a contractual buisness arangement with the telephone company we have given over to them certain rights. We have no right to a telephone excepting that the phone company can't discriminate based on race, religion, etc. Therefore, if we want a phone, we have to be willing to give up some privacy and we will have to pay to regain some of what we lost. Or we can shop for another company (now really possible because of cell phones)... Speaking of cell phones... see my next post. Paul . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
