Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

A Number For Everything

Posted by timothy on from the at-least-there's-no-potential-for-abuse dept.

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 ..."

1 of 598 comments (clear)

  1. This already exists by Gerv · · Score: 3, Troll

    As soon as countries standardise on 00 as the international access code (and that's happening) then we will have a global unique numbering system administered by countries. It's called the phone system.

    In the UK, we can already get "personal numbers" which you can have redirected to wherever you are. There's no reason why companies in other countries can't do the same thing.

    That gives you all the benefits of unique personal numbering without many of the SSN/Big Brother/Brave New World/buzzword-X privacy concerns.

    Gerv