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Comment by decremental | Hacker News Reader

The third party sellers shouldn't get access to your contact information. On DoorDash, calls go through DoorDash's system. Same with text messages. No one gets the other person's real number. I've had one restaurant that always calls me right after I place the order to ask me for my phone number to put into their system for future orders. I always tell them no, I prefer to go through DoorDash instead. A similar system should be in place at Amazon.

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I've seen a pretty common scam where items are sold for "too good to be true" prices, only to be cancelled a few days later. I assume this is to harvest people's contact info

Aha - that's what this is. I keep wondering why many sub-20$ items on eBay keep getting cancelled on me. The equivalent item on Amazon is usually 20-25$ (but doesn't quality for free tier shipping on its own) so I shop eBay for same - half the time or more recently it's either a) a drop-ship from Amazon even in its box/packaging, or b) cancelled as 'buyer requested cancel'. I knew it was a scam but I didn't know what for.

Good thing I ship to a PO box and use a generic C/O name.

The New York City council recently passed a bill that requires apps, like Doordash, to share the customers real name, number, email address.

Their reasoning is that this somehow "helps" small-business.

https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4...

This just allows them to sell your name+email+phone+address to Google et al.

State mandated doxxing.

This is why I have a burner phone number, throwaway domain/email, and special alias for food delivery that needs my home address.

..but then they still have your home address in their archive of PII. Which is bad enough (wasn't Dominos or New York Pizza hacked the other day with PII getting leaked?).

I barely ever read spam (and receive it mainly on one of my older e-mail addresses but it does end up in the spam filter). I barely ever receive spam on my phone number. I won't say never, cause it has happened, but probably like twice a year or so. And I use my real phone number and real e-mail address everywhere. Which, in case of using an alias, isn't clever. But in your case, they still got the address.

Every street address is public. All houses order food. Nothing private is disclosed.

> Every street address is public.

Not quite, but I'll give it a pass.

> All houses order food.

Nope, not everyone orders food. Perhaps in your bubble.

> Nothing private is disclosed.

Incorrect, it is PII. It is a real name connected to a street address first of all (one could use an alias; I do). And, possibly (potentially) also containing metadata such as what is being ordered, at which time, and how much.

Moreover, it denotes activity. If you want to lay low, your street address might be officially public (mine is) yet not receive spam on it.

For some reason, it isn't possible to only give a business your address (and other PII) when they need it and force them to discard it completely afterwards. Why not? Because when leaks happen, they're not hold accountable. See the essay Data Is a Toxic Asset, So Why Not Throw It Out? by Bruce Schneier [1]

[1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_t...

Craigslist does this for emails with their email relay service. I greatly appreciate the feature.

If they’re shipping direct to you instead of Amazon fulfillment, they need your name and address. That’s plenty in a lot of cases.

They don't need your email or phone number though, even if so, and both of those are a lot easier/cheaper to spam.

I'm sure the line is that they need it in case of problems during delivery. Couriers always want it for that, or trying to ensure there aren't problems (for them) like missed deliveries by texting you to say they're delivering today or whatever.

I don't really have a problem with that in general, but yeah I don't want to deal with random third party sellers.

Also in my experience when there's a problem with the item and you need a return/refund, it never gets sorted until you escalate to Amazon. Assuming you're not happy with a 20p partial refund and a complimentary bizarre plastic children's toy (when what you ordered was nothing of the kind).

Couriers do say that, it seems, but have you ever experienced them using it? I never get anything at all, unless I look up the tracking online. Doesn't matter if the package is on time or if it disappeared somewhere in Alaska or if it got delivered 2 streets over, total radio silence.

Yeah, all the time. Very rarely for a problem (my building is slightly awkward so they do sometimes call because they're stuck at lower ground level and can't get in) but routinely 'delivering your package today between 1pm and 2pm' or whatever, then often 15min before.

This is in the UK though, obviously can't and I'm not claiming it's the norm everywhere.

Interesting. In any part of the US I've lived in, and with any shipping company I've ever used, they don't do anything like that. I wish they would.

I was supposed to get a delivery today, but it requires a signature and I was in the back yard when they knocked on the door. A quick text or call would have been great. Alas.

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