[google-serf]

A) my claim is accurate. I was told it was used for account recovery. It is clearly been used to correlate with a google profile. This was opt-out and I didn't actually catch it in nov 2013 when the tech media had a cry about it. Their support article you gave mentioned is a lie, they are clearly using recovery numbers to populate their bullshit caller ID system.

B) the option is NOT there if you do not have a google plus account. Do you need me to screenshot it? If you see the word "hangout" near the mobile number you have google plus account. I had one option, remove recovery number. There was no opt-out "help others find me" tick. Didn't exist. I have no "hangout" settings. Somehow my google account must be in some kind of limbo where I'm not actually using other google services.

Your only option was to purge the number from account recovery, which I have done. My name and "YouTube" picture still appear on android handsets without an explicit contact. It's probably cached like that iPhone to android iMessage case recently.

[Shooti]

On B, "Hangouts" and the opt out check box on that page only appears if you've previously opted in by saying yes to the "help my friends find me on google services/Confirm my number with a 1 time SMS" prompt either via Hangouts, or the Google Dialer in KitKat via a Nexus device. Otherwise it just shows Account Recovery, or nothing at all with no Phone number. The feature is opt-in, not opt-out.

As for your name and number showing up, to double check the obvious make sure the handset you tested on wasn't sync'd to Google allowing it to auto-populate the automated on-Device "Me" contact entry with your pic. If it was someone else's Google account synced phone, they have you in a Google Contacts entry w/ an email address, since that would pull in your pic and make it accessible to the dialer. That's their prerogative, not yours.

[google-serf]

Ok, I've never opted in to has hangouts. Every example of the tick box i could find in images had a hangouts option. I understand if it is not related but it was worth mentioning.

It was not my phone, it was a friends who had started from a fresh android 4.4 install. There was no google contact sync. Even if the contact sync was in place, it would be unlikely that the other party would have used my 5 year old YouTube avatar and populated it with both my email and phone number and full name. If my contact on his google side was populated from my gmail; as I have emailed the other party before, it shouldn't contain my phone number either - unless google matched it and shared.

Something went wrong. I think my account is an edge case and I was opted into a service (you are dickheads. Opt out is always evil.) and because I had not consumed enough other services my account was not given the option to opt out. Point remains, google matched my recovery number with my profile, which they said they wouldn't. I can't see any other explanation.

[Shooti]

> Even if the contact sync was in place, it would be unlikely that the other party would have used my 5 year old YouTube avatar and populated it with both my email and phone number and full name.If my contact on his google side was populated from my gmail; as I have emailed the other party before, it shouldn't contain my phone number either - unless google matched it and shared.

I'll repeat my alternate explanation more concretely: the name and the Youtube pic was auto-synced via @GMail, and your friend just manually added your phone number to it. It's now permanently in his Gmail account as part of Google Contacts, independent of anything done on Google's part.

Get your friend to delete his contact of you from the address book ("People") and see if it occurs again.

[mikeash]

Have you ruled out the various other ways that the phone could potentially turn your phone number into your name?

[google-serf]

Blank android 4.4 phone. 0 contacts. Not my phone. Not possible to get it anywhere but google. It even had a YouTube avatar I have not used for 5 years or so. It was from there.