A Number For Everything

jtcampbell writes: "Whilst reading the Times today I found this article about a U.S. government idea to give everyone a unique 'ENUM,' that serves as a universal phone number, email address, and fax number. Quite a cool idea, but will everyone adopt the standard? besides, i thought we left numeric email addresses with compuserve a few years back. And remembering these 11 digit numbers could be fun ..."

Comments

Universal SPAM!?

[Maul]

Oh great, now it will be even easier for spammers to make sure their junk reaches everyone.

Changing numbers

[SBChoDogg]

What about changing your number? With regular phone numbers and email addresses you can change them if you get too many prank phone calls or too much spam. If everyone had a unique number issued by the government, which would probably be easy for others to find, I think we would run into all kinds of privacy issues.

Re:ICQ

[jandrese]

I think ICQ UINs work because for the most part we don't care about them. You only need a UIN when you're setting up a new ICQ instance on a computer somewhere, and you only have to remember your own. The rest can be found using the search features of ICQ fairly easily (assuming your friends don't change their information constantly). It's not like you say "Hmm, I want to contact person X, what was his 12 digit number again?"

Sort the names out first ...

[os2fan]

The idea of people identifying themselves on the net is rather interesting, but we also have to address that people may have a legitimate need to have more than one name.

The following is a sample of people who might need more than one identity:

• Battered wives hiding from husbands.
• Witness protection programs
• Whistle-Blowers and others wanting to be semi-anomonious
• People having strong gender dysphoria, wishing to have a foot in each gender. [Yes, it's a real condition that has a high suicide rate, because the mind and body don't get along that well.]

So we should consider the identity issues before we start slamming other doors first.

Re:ICQ

[agentZ]

Yes, but ICQ lets you give a user an alias that you see on the screen. You don't get messages from "1636181," they show up as "Tammy says:" Plus, It's far easier for humans to recognize the error between "Stephen" and "Stepehn" than "1636181" and "1631681"

My Mother...

[philovivero]

... recalls when the United States government propaganda pointed out that the Soviet Union "gives every citizen a number that identifies them." Of course, it was implied that the United States was better than such a totalitarian regime that treats its citizens like sheep or automatons.

Sigh.

Multiple Identities

[ArticulateArne]

This could be nifty, but one of the great parts of modern technology is being able to use different means of access to regulate people's contact with you. The easiest example, of course, is spam. I have about six different email addresses that I use on a regular basis, and the email address I give to a person or website is based on how I want them to be able to contact me. I have a Hotmail box entirely for the purpose of collecting spam (and boy, does it do a good job). That's the only thing it does, and that's the address that I give out on any website (and any other spam-generating contexts), so I know that anything that comes into there was not requested.

I also have a cell phone, and I'm very careful with whom I give that number. There are some people that I absolutely want to have it; there are other people that, under no circumstances, would I want them to have it. It's the same at work. I give some people my direct desk extension, and I send some people through the secretary. Having a universal access number like that could cause no end of grief for people, and eliminate one of the great ways of escaping contact when that's necessary.

Also, IIRC (and I'm sorry, but I don't feel like checking this out), I thought that originally it was illegal to use a SSN to track anything other than Social Security. Of course, people use it for everything now, but I'm not so sure that's a good idea.

My $.02

Re:Revelations 13:16 - 18

[Alien54]

Someone was going to post this eventually.

True enough.

Although this goes back to the ancient paranoia of big government of any kind. although originally this was ancient Rome.

There is a large community of people who are always going to oppose things like this just for this specific reason.

Think of what MS could do with this sort of Government Standard, for example.

It all does come down to a matter of trust. and sadly, the number of people and organizations that we normally can trust implicity with this sort of thing are tragically few.

Until then, this sort of thing is probably a bad idea. Just because of the problem of trust, and the few bad apples.

- - -
Radio Free Nation
If You have the Story, We have the Soap Box

Easy to safeguard against this

[heretic108]

I could see the system working well, and resisting spam, if the following safeguards are put in place
1) No message to be delivered to an ENUM unless it's from another ENUM
2) No interference with existing email addresses - allow these to keep being used
3) Allow ENUM users to set 'privacy policies' on their ENUM, including 'no unsolicited promotional material'. Sending spam to an ENUM in defiance of applicable policies to be a criminal offense.

Re:Easy to safeguard against this

[gnovos]

You forgot something. What happens to the famous people? Sure, Madonna could block MY ENUM account after my first few love-sick-stalker emails, but how does she expect to stop hundreds of millions of those?