Validation of telephone numbers by third parties

DDvO / Duplicate-Contacts-Manager

This Thunderbird add-on searches address book(s) for pairs of matching contact entries. It can automatically delete entries that have equivalent or less information than the other one. Any remaining matches are presented for manual treatment.

http://ddvo.net/DuplicateContactsManager/

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Validation of telephone numbers by third parties #8

Closed PanderMusubi closed 4 years ago

PanderMusubi commented 4 years ago

Like https://github.com/DDvO/Duplicate-Contacts-Manager/issues/7 also telephone numbers can be validated against known formats.

Additionally, and only with full consent of the user (as telephone numbers are send to a third party), telephone numbers can also be checked by services such as:

Within their free plans or after providing credentials. This would filter out phone numbers that are no longer in use.

DDvO commented 4 years ago

Sending telephone numbers (and potentially other personal data) to third parties for checking for would not only mean a major code extension but likely is not possible due to security restrictions on Thunderbird add-on. Moreover it would be a major data protection / privacy issue, and would on many countries not only require full consent by the add-on user but also consent of the data owners, i.e., the persons listed in the address book(s). Therefore I certainly won't support that.

DDvO commented 4 years ago

See also my more general comment to #7, which also covers the first comment you gave here. So I've restricted this issue to the more specific topic of third-party online phone number checking.