Contents
Is the phone number linked to a person?
The majority of phone-numbers are linked to unique persons (e.g. their mobile, desk or home), making a phone-number a unique identifier number pointing to a single person. You could also argue that some phone-numbers are obviously not coupled to a person, but since the percentage of numbers that do largely outnumber the numbers that don’t.
What makes a phone number considered personal data?
Different pieces of information, which collected together can lead to the identification of a particular person, also constitute personal data.Personal data that has been de-identified, encrypted or pseudonymised but can be used to re-identify a person remains personal data and falls within the scope of the law.
Is the phone number a standalone phone number?
The server isn’t collecting number sequences at random, using them to populate a model of some kind, and then discarding them. It is building a durable data structure that has entities that are intended ultimately to map to humans, and storing those numbers as metadata with those entities.
Is it possible to correlate a phone number to a person?
In many cases even if shared number it is still possible to correlate it to a person. The only one that is not possible is the public phones. Because we do not know this we cannot take the risk of relaxed security in all other phone numbers that might be uniquely associated to a specific person.
Can a phone number be used as identity proof?
You supply a username, password, and sometimes you provide your email address or phone number. Often times when you set up your account you have some kind of agreed-upon way of proofing that over time. Based on that pre-established protocol, the user can log in and do transactions.
How are phone numbers used in real life?
Phone numbers can clearly be used to re-identify a person in a later stage of data processing. If you enrich it with enough other data (e.g. subscriptions, website visits, geo-locations) you could possibly even identify the natural person. Some companies link phone-numbers to online advertisement-cookie-ids leading to very rich profiles.