Until it is.
> It’s no better than selling a gun to a person you know intends to use it to commit a crime.
Though I guess you could be making the case that crime is a legitimate use of guns?
To be clear, my original post only pointed out that what you said is a non sequitur:
> It’s no better than selling a gun to a person you know intends to use it to commit a crime.
> > Just so we’re clear: getting shot is quite a bit worse than having your phone number stolen.
If your phone number being stolen causes your savings to get drained for long enough that you run into problems making important payments like rent, taxes, car payments; That can pretty quickly spiral into even worse situations. In a world/country where many people have too few savings to go even a month without being paid, losing even that can get extremely dangerous. Not to mention the stress of such a situation alone will probably take quite a bit of your life expectancy off.
At least in the United States, we also live in a society where the financial ramifications of getting shot could lead to equally bad financial outcomes (whether directly or indirectly).