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Yes but users of your web site or app are pretty unlikely to put their phone number as one of these, aren’t they?

Not really, at least for B2B stuff.

I have access to a bunch of big marketing lists and there are always at least some Phonewords in there. The only big lists without them are the ones collected by forms that only allowed digits in the phone field.

Also on a personal level I have a "joke" number of (404)myname that I put into contact forms that allow it. Developers I talk to seem to have an easy time remembering my # because of the joke.

Shout out to http://phonespell.org, on the internet since 1995.

> What language is PhoneSpell written in?

> PhoneSpell is a system of multiple parts, some in C++, some in Perl, some in C, some in shtml, and some in shell scripts.

Checks out.

The mapping from letter to digit varies by country. Less so nowadays with mobile phones, but still.