Can websites see your phone number?

[3GGy]

To start, I've been in the same job for 5 years. I haven't been looking for another until recently.

A few weeks back I visited the Indeed website. I might have an acount, but I certainly didn't logged into it and haven't done for many years, and certainly not on this phone, so no log-in details stored

Within 5 minutes a recruiter contacted me on Whatsapp. I didn't engage, put it down to coincidence.

Yesterday I was on Glassdoor, the first time I've been back on a job website since. Within hours another message on Whatsapp.

I suspect a scam but broke rule number 1 by engaging, purely out of interest as to what's going on here.

They tell me they got my number from the UK Recruitment Database. I blocked them at this point.

It wouldn't surpise me with our ever eroding privacy online, but is that where we are now at? Websites are provided with your phone number? Or is it a real time meshing of cookie identifiers linked to my phone number?

I'm interested in what the techology is doing I suppose. Anyone up on this stuff?

[Alorotom]

Id say coincidence - I get LOTS of those messages on WA and Telegram every day (probably 8-10, every day) and its even where I have debated changing my number but the problematic ripples of that are massive for me.

[3GGy]

I did think coincidence the first time, but I don't get any spam. I've always been good with my details and don't have much in the way of social media, which is why this stands out.

It's a huge coincidence if it is one.

[anonymous-user]

If you have visited the site with that browser before and have accepted cookies they could easily tie it to your account,

[xeny]

Do you tend to create accounts specific to web sites, or use the "login with your google account" or similar?

If the latter, then any site where you have provided a phone no has scope for being matched across all the others....

[3GGy]

xeny said:

Do you tend to create accounts specific to web sites, or use the "login with your google account" or similar?

If the latter, then any site where you have provided a phone no has scope for being matched across all the others....

Just create accounts specific to the website. Don't think I've ever used the other method.

Bluequay said:

If you have visited the site with that browser before and have accepted cookies they could easily tie it to your account,

I don't know, it's not my field. If it's that easy though I'm surprised my phone isn't bouncing around the coffee table with messages from online retailers trying to get me to buy all the crap I've recently looked at on their website. That's why I find this so odd.

Edited by 3GGy on Sunday 18th June 19:21

[ribpx]

They can't "see your phone number" per se, but though clever use of tracking technology they could potentially derive your identity and therefore phone number by joining the dots between various sources.

Services like https://www.leadforensics.com/ do this kind of thing, but typically it's targeted at B2B sales rather than identifying consumers (that would arguably be a lot more shady from a compliance risk perspective).