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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

So what actually happened is you gave Google your phone number for the specific purpose of publishing it so customers of your business can contact you, and forgot. You should update your post so people aren't misled.

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No, I gave my phone number to Google to gain access to Business Profile, as part of an identity verification process, and specifically didn't give them one to publish on the business listing. And they correctly didn't publish one. For 4+ years.

And then one day then decided to publish the one I'd given them for an identity check... in search results. I don't yet know why.

I don't believe the phone number in Google Play comes from Business Profile. Business Profile is a Maps thing. The way a phone number gets on the developer page of the Play Store is by you entering it into the Play Store developer console for that purpose.

Since it was published by you as public contact information for your business on Google, either a customer or one of the contractors Google employs to update phone numbers in Maps listings then added it to Maps.

Sorry, I got mixed-up between this and another thread. You're right, the Google Play one was provided separately (and has now been corrected).

My post was about the Business Profile one. Which started (seemingly randomly) containing the same phone number.

Maps business listings are publicly editable and continuously updated by Google from any source they can find. Especially phone numbers. Google employs people to search the Internet all day long for business phone numbers to update on Maps. You published the number publicly, specifically listed as contact information for your business, on a Google site even. There is no mystery here.

Could be! My only counterpoint is that every time they've previously made a change, they've emailed to say so, and I've searched my email (including spam) and not found any such mention this time around. /shrug/

You still need to update your post to include the obviously relevant information that you explicitly gave Google this phone number for the specific purpose of publishing it as public contact information for your business.

Only a reminder to never give out your phone number, I suppose.

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