Also in Sweden. Most people, almost everyone, have their phone numbers and addresses listed in publicly searchable databases. Everyone's taxable income is public too (accessing it online costs a nominal fee from an aggregator service).
It's fine, it's not really abused that much. You can request a protected identity from the authorities if you really do have stalkers but it's a bureaucratic hassle. Mainly since everything in this society relies on anyone wanting to do business with you to be able to look your existence up using your personal number.
I was responding to the reference in GP’s comment that “…your name, address, and phone number would published…” which is the case with gulesider. Their comment was about pre-internet, mine was referring to the post-internet version. Apologies if there was confusion.
Additionally, the Wikipedia page on ‘Telephone directory’ [0] states:
> A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages
I don't think I'm splitting hairs here. The difference is that your name isn't in "gule sider", since it's a directory of businesses.
"Telefonkatalogen" was what other countries call "white pages", which is a directory of individuals.
The GP comment was indeed about the pre-Internet, but the whole point is that nobody publishes a big, widely distributed book with everyone's names in it anymore. You could literally get a book with every living adult in Norway listed. Sure, you have online services like 1881.no and gulesider.no that are the successors to this directory, but they're not at all the same thing.
> The difference is that your name isn't in "gule sider", since it's a directory of businesses.
I must be missing something; I can find pretty much every person I know in Norway in there by looking up their name (unless they have explicitly opted out).
It's fine, it's not really abused that much. You can request a protected identity from the authorities if you really do have stalkers but it's a bureaucratic hassle. Mainly since everything in this society relies on anyone wanting to do business with you to be able to look your existence up using your personal number.