... and Comcast didn't care a whit. After all the customers paid them to protect the information, and they already had the money, and the customers have no where else to go anyway since its mostly a monopoly. Pay some small fine, move on, maybe you can upsell them on even more protection and make it up anyway. This sure makes me want to support Comcast becoming a national monopoly.
People have to PAY to have an unlisted number? That seems like a very strange concept to me.
Telcos have been charging for that forever. Most of your normal "landline replacement" VoIP providers do not. I suppose it was only a natural progression though for Comcast to charge for it, since that's kind of their MO.
Yes but there is a way around the problem -- you can list your number under the previous owner's name. Then whenever you get a phone call asking for <Previous Owner's Name> you know you can immediately hang up.
I agree it's not quite a perfect substitute, but it works fairly well.
Another reason to just go with a mobile phone. There are no listings for those numbers that I am aware of.
There's still a database of customer names and billing/contact information. That could easily be breached as well.