Yes, I remember these (they also send a map of the city with all the street and public transportation lines)
But the point is that you can be unlisted from these (and as far as I remember it was free). Not sure about the part where you can call an operator that tell you the number you are looking for.
Anyway, the problem is that Google seems to have shared the phone number even if the user declined to do so (and by the user account, the number was not listed for years). This just seems a move from Google that show a total disperect of the user decision.
MangoCats@feddit.it 4 weeks ago
With social media, e-mail, and the rest of it “out there” people have started assuming that “unlisted” is the default for voice phones now. Also, in those “good old days” of the ubiquitous phone books, the listings were mostly land-lines, and mobile phones were unlisted by default. Because of the rates charged for mobile calls in the dying days of the white pages, there were even special laws regarding unsolicited calls to your mobile phone.
It used to be difficult AND expensive to get an unlisted domain name as well, but that has been evolving and now it’s a no-cost checkbox option when registering whether you want your contact info to be listed with the domain ownership or not.
Times do change, and while we are generally more exposed than ever, I believe the shifts to more “private by default” configurations of our contact info are a good thing.