I received an advertisement from T-Mobile in the mail today where they must have gotten my data from some website that forced me to fill out personal information

Phuck Ahhf

This is art.

I routinely get texts to "Henry", which is not my name. I must have done the same--entered a fake name. The bastards are persistent, I keep blocking the number, and they keep texting with a different number. I don't understand the reasoning, if I go so far as to block your number, why do you think continuing to harass me is going to change my mind?

Heads up, the 9 digit zip code (xxxxx-xxxx) alone is as valid of a mailing address as any "full" address.

That is to say, by leaving the full zip, you've low key exposed the actual address, which can be found with a quick google search.

Could be that by blocking you let them know it's an active number, and anything with a pulse on the other side of the phone is a potential lick

It shouldn't generally be obvious they are blocked. Especially for texts (that aren't RCS) they should learn nothing

Hey, maybe Fuck Off wants free stickers mailed to them.

Sure but why do you care? It's not like they did anything it was the guy who mailed this to them and all they did was a mildly funny prank.

Surely the last 4 digits don't point to an exact house. I'm fairly certain my zip code has more than 9999 houses. It does seem like it would get you pretty close though.

Because leaving your adress on the Internet, even if only vaguely precise is not very smart and safe so its good to warn people?

I still get a load of spammy texts directed to the prior user of my #, and pretty clearly they're almost all produced by simple automation. But even with live callers, I believe many companies have automated a lot of that process as well. So as with email spam (etc), it might take surprisingly little effort to produce the call. So it can still be worth it for them, statistically, to harass you.

Zip+four is only down the the block level, you need 2 more digits (zip+6) to uniquely identify every possible address in the US. That said, a 9 digit barcode is way too close to a full address for most people to be comfortable with sharing online.

TIL

Uh, username checks out.

Same here, but the name is "Sierra". I've had the same phone number for 25 years

I'm careful to never even mention the state I live in, but here OP is freely posting their city and 9 digit zip code. As the other user said, you've told people what block you live on. 😬

Leave it to Internet users to take offense to a friendly warning lol

I suppose I grew up semirural, so growing up, my zip plus 4 identified my single house. Good to know that's not thexactly the case all the time. Still, pretty identifying.

It narrows it down to a delivery truck at least.

1-8-5-0-5 dash 7-4-2-7

Neighborhood pride

I went down a brief rabbit hole on the zip+4 and the IMb (intelligent mailer barcode). The +4 was originally a local division inside a single zipcode, like a neighborhood or mail route. +4 and the barcode was then called POSTNET -- decommissioned and now upgraded barcode encoding to IMb, which can contain like 2000 bits of data. The zip +4 technically now has a length of 11 digits, and is inside a IMb barcode.

Conclusion, barcodes have sensitive data too. ~✍️

edit add: i wanted to see if my phone's barcode app could scan too see if OP's post office really calls him Mr. Off, but it cant natively read mailer codes and I fell asleep and the rabbit hole ended.

So they weren't willing to give out their name, but their full address was fine?

Or a potato

well, that goes without saying

oooooh these guys are ripe for a bobby tables

Breh delete this or you gonna have strangers knocking on your door

Removing this because you've basically doxxed yourself by broadcasting your exact location to the whole Internet.
Posting this again will get you banned.
We don't wanna deal with whatever some random wacko can do with basically your exact coordinates.