How Did My Friend’s Photo Get On My Phone?

I never saved a photo of anyone on my phone. Yet when I called my friend just now, there was his photo associated with his phone number. This has never happened before for any of my contacts.

This photo once appeared on his Facebook timeline, but it’s not his profile picture or cover photo, and it’s not even in his saved photos.

And I have never read an email from him on my phone.

I think this is unacceptably intrusive on the part of Verizon. So I deleted the photo from his contact information on my phone, but it still appears for each of the calls to and from him in the list of previous calls. And as far as I can see, the only way to change that would be to manually select all of his calls, one at a time, and delete them from the list.

Does anybody have any ideas about how this happened, or at least a suggestion for where to research this?

Why am I asking MajorGeeks this? ‘Cause it’s software-related, and I don’t know who else to ask.

 

Are you saying that this could happen if he also has Verizon, and he adds it to his own profile on his phone? Or maybe even if he doesn’t have Verizon?

 

It's part of the caller ID now. If you add a pic of yourself or your dog it'll show up when you call them.

 

Same thing can happen if you both have Google accounts and your friend has added his photo to his profile.

 

I fail to see how all the “help” the mega-corporations provide constitutes anything other than brazen intrusion.

 

The picture came from my friend's Gmail account. He never authorized Google to pass it off to Sprint, his cell phone carrier. And now Verizon, my cell phone carrier, has the picture too. These mega-corporations just sell the public's personal data back and forth without asking permission. If I do a search on Google or eBay, then immediately related ads appear on my Facebook timeline. They're spying on the us all the time. And they're right up front about it; they don't try to hide it. They just want to keep reminding us that they're gonna keep doing it, 'til we give up all protest in exhaustion.

 

Yes, of course I asked my friend if he added it to his phone, and he said no, but he HAD recently added it to his Google profile. I wouldn’t have made such a definitive statement without knowing what I was talking about. And I never mentioned the government. But since you did, I would tell you two things: 1. I myself have a pet peeve about unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, and 2. do a search on Echelon.

And just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get me.

 

Thanks for the link. Well, Google pairing profile pictures with verified phone numbers certainly explains this. And I’m sure my friend has accessed his Gmail account from his phone, although I don’t think that that was necessary to pair his picture with his phone number.