Like the Terminator!

Kunming-Chiangmai return, 2 weeks apart, on weekdays, early July, about US$280 all together, inc. taxes & whatever but without the silly $12 insurance.

ah! the good old phone directory, in the bad old days before identity theft was a major problem

... as well as a million ways for official and unofficial bodies, from governments to advertisers, to spy on yr every move.

Advertiser coupons in the mailbox and let's not forget cable public-access. Gone with the Dodo bird.

.

A lot of the junk mailing, etc. really came on line when phone directories were computerized.This still required active work on the part of the mailing company.
In the early 2000s companies and organisations could buy mailing lists, which were passed on and sold on again.
Now companies and agencies can tie together all of your digitized data. Most of it by systems passively collecting data, and that is before we think about webcrawlers and bots. Many data collections stored have been hacked and put to nefarious uses. Even some data that has not been hacked has been used for nefarious purposes.

Calling bullshit and comparing today's data collection situation with phone directories, is a bit like saying humans have been able to travel with harnessed power since the first horse and cart, and ignoring how transportation has developed since then.

I thought aliens were more advanced than us.