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Google shared my phone number

When people started calling my personal mobile number with questions about a voluntary organisation I'm involved with, I was confused: we weren't sharing that number. It turns out that Google had decided to take the number I used to verify my identity for Google Business some years prior and start putting it in Google Search results. WTF, Google?

Earlier this month, I received a phone call from a user of Three Rings, the volunteer/rota management software system I founded. Some years ago, I provided my phone number to Google as part of an identity verification process, but didn’t consent to it being shared publicly. I deleted my phone number from the business listing again, and within a few minutes it seemed to have stopped being served to random strangers on the Internet.

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