ENUM Protocol in Australia?

Master Kai writes "Looks like Australia's thinking about implementing ENUM, an internet protocol that will convert a simple phone number into a URI. The benefits are obvious, use one number to contact you on any communications medium. Your website, fixed phone, fax, mobile (cell) and email address. But at what cost to our privacy? I know that personally I prefer to give out my email address, because I can change it at the click of a button. And what about spam? Not only would spamers have your email address, but your contact numbers too. Eeeep! Anyway. It looks good nonetheless. Check out the news article , and for the Australian Communications Authority Discussion Paper. "

Comments

I already...

[Romothecus]

get phone calls from spammers anyway.

Re:I already...

[bakes]

I have received a few SMS spams in recent weeks. Apparently 'someone I know secretly fancies me', and wants me to call a 1902 number. They obviously fancy me enough to take 4.95 a minute from me, but not enough to meet me in person and let me stuff it down the front of their pants.

One thing we can agree on...

[403Forbidden]

I think we can ALL agree that any form of "wonder number" is a bad thing.

Any number/ID that ties YOU into everything that you ever sign up for and every communication device you own is never a good thing. Some things you just want to keep private.

I can see where this would be good in a business world, where instead of saying "my fax is: ###-####, my phone is ###-#### my email is..." etc. they can just give out one number.

Re:One thing we can agree on...

[binaryDigit]

SSN numbers are assigned to every US citizen, that's pretty much were the similarities stop.

Well, not really. What does getting credit have to do with Social Security. Not much, but yet the SSN now equates more with credit than it does social security. Fact is that the SSN is the number that most peoples lives revolve around (I said most, not all, I know there are people out there who avoid this, but the majority don't). Given that, with a host of other pieces of identifying data, you can be tracked anywhere. Not giving wally-mart your SSN really doesn't have anything to do with privacy, it has more to do with fraud. If you use your real info to get that license, you can easily be cross referenced right back to your SSN, not problemo.

Privacy is the biggest victim in the information society.

The threat of spam..

[Breakfast Pants]

The threat of spam will keep this from ever becoming a reality. However this will probaly not increase telemarketing "spam" too much because there is already a public listing where they can get your number, its called a phonebook. The reason email spam will be a problem with this is simply because email is practically no cost to spammers.

Re:The threat of spam..

[Gerry Gleason]

It's getting very close to the time when I want to refuse all calls and email unless the other party has a token indicating that I have given permission. Well the tech details can be different, but how often do you get a call you want from someone that could easily be listed as a friend or something. Ok, so the cell phone provider might want to call to say I forgot to make the payment, or such, but that could be part of setting up the account. It should be non-transferable too, so they can't even give it to their own telemarketers.

Reguardless of whether there is a system like this one in place, the spammers (phone and email) will be able to get your info if they want, we just need to invent the technological means of denying their ability to use it.

Also, the ENUM thing is stupid. For those I want to deal with, the single ID I want is my name, not some randomly assigned number.

Re:The threat of spam..

[FFFish]

Oooh, the token idea rocks! Especially if one can have unlimited tokens. 'cause then one can assign an individual token to each friend, a set of tokens to various types of acquaintances, and one-off tokens to the gimboits that you just know will end up either using it to spam you or to sell to some marketer.

One can then define acceptance parameters for the tokens. And will be able to trace just who the sonuffabitch is that leaked their token to a spam agency.

"Token #275 is being used for spam? Dammit, Mom, I told you to never give that number out to strangers! I'm gonna revoke it. Here's your new token... and if you leak it, I'll revoke it and not give ya a new one!"

Tel$tra Problem

[CountZero007]

I think it'd be okay if it was an opt-in decision (like unlisted numbers).

Assuming Telstra doesn't mess it up (like they did this year, printing some unlisted numbers in the phone book).

I'm sure it'll just become another "feature" they try and charge people for.

Hey Baby can I get your website?

[Nathdot]

"Sure you can. It's www.555-6789.com"

*Later*
"Yowzer, that mama was hot,hot,hot... Hang on... 555 (dawning on him) GODDAMMIT!!!"

Re:Hey Baby can I get your website?

[drdink]

See here.

Re:Hey Baby can I get your website?

[OO7david]

Or for the geek girls:

"Sure I'm Jenny and my number is http://86.75.3.09

RFC 2916

[gmanske]

The ENUM Technical Specification can be found here.

Gmanske.

phone number? Not mine

[Bloody Bastard]

I used to put my work phone number in my emails until a stupid guy from a mail list started to call me to discuss some topic that he disagreed... what a pain in the neck!!!

Re:phone number? Not mine

[joshtimmons]

John, is that you? I've been trying to call, but your number doesn't work anymore...

Re:phone number? Not mine

[bilbobuggins]

was it your boss? i stopped putting my number in emails when my boss started using it too...

Re:Changing numbers...

[shird]

I'm pretty sure theres a cost involved with doing that. Also, a phone number is a lot more personal and long term than an e-mail address. The reason people change numbers when they move is because they want to keep that number, as it is closely associated with them. You can always just ignore a certain e-mail address by just not checking it. Its a lot more difficult to ignore your phone ringing off the hook.

Re:What in the heck is a "URI" anyway? Did I miss.

[saskboy]

Universal Resource Inibitor?

Thanks. ;-)

Re: URI Universal Resource Identifier

[saskboy]

Request for Comments doc:
This document updates and merges "Uniform Resource Locators"
[RFC1738] and "Relative Uniform Resource Locators" [RFC1808] in order
to define a single, generic syntax for all URI.

Alston's and Telstra's Ineptitude

[ynotds]

At it's heart this is a product of the Telstra cultural malignancy whereby they actually believe that eight plus digit numbers define the pinnacle of usability.

I really should write a book on the sad quarter century of Telstra struggling and failing to turn online information into an income stream without ever coming to terms with the fundamental dynamics of the information age, so I shouldn't try to squeeze too many details into a SlashDot post before I run the facts past a libel lawyer.

As Australia's public telecomms carrier, Telstra's world view continues to blinker policy debate, even more so since our reactionary federal governement installed the even more reactionary Senator Richard Alston on top of the information and communications policy bureacracy, basically as an offshoot of his dabblings with the arts.

How amusing that Telstra has been thrown a lifeline by the rise of mobile (cellular) phone usage. They still don't have a clue that the biggest plus for mobile phones is that they enable you to stop addressing people by their numbers.

But it's still far and away the best place to live, even if the numbers don't always add up.

Since A Phone Number Is Arbitrary...

[Tsali]

Personally, I think they should match it to your license plate number. That way, you can call people who are driving horribly and then email them about how badly they were driving via your PDA. We could turn road rage into its own medium.

So if you don't have a phone number because you're one of the few people on the planet that doesn't have a phone, would you be unknown to the Australian government?

If I were forced....

[Technician]

I would simply stop checking my regular e-mail. I would have a personel website. To contact me, you would have to visit the website and fill out the online form. This would be used to stop clutter from any mass mailing. Those wishing a personal contact would have to do a personal vist to the site. My home phone would get an automated voicemail system. I would not be in easy reach of the mass marketers.

Re:What in the heck is a "URI" anyway? Did I miss.

[G-funk]

Why is this modded funny? It's not, URI is the correct term.

http://www.foo.com/ is a URL

mailto:bob@smith.com.au is a URI

why a number?

[RussRoss]

If I wanted to pick a single identifier (which, like many others who have commented, I don't), I wouldn't want it to be a 10 digit number. Maybe I should start giving out my IP address instead of my named web site address, too. You don't see people rushing out to register domain names like 2139812309.com because they suck compared to even a ridiculous name like slashdot.org. I thought we were past using meaningless numbers for electronic addresses. Am I the only one who thinks they are doing this backwards? - Russ

Australia

[vlad_petric]

While I agree with you that this won't work in the US, let's not forget that Australia has a pretty strong anti-spamming legislation. I hope that ENUM works well-enough to prove the efficiency of antispamming regulations.

The Raven

why not a number?

[keithmoore]

actually, numbers are great. they are terse, they work on any keyboard in the world (including telephone keyboards), and they are language-independent. and when you think about it, phone numbers really aren't much less mnemonic than the local-part of a typical big-ISP email address.
of course, nobody's suggesting that we use numbers instead of email addresses or URLs, but addresses that consist of nothing but digits are in fact quite useful.

and anyway, enum is only half of the picture - there's also a proposal for mapping URLs to other information from the rescap working group. The basic idea is that an identifier should not be inherently tied to one single kind of resource - given either a phone number or a URL (and the latter includes email addresses), you should be able to find out additional information about that resource if the owner of that number/URL wants to provide it. phone number to web page? easy.
email address to phone number? sure, if I want to provide it. or maybe you have my voice # and want to send me email. again, no problem.

Just call me '7.2.4.8.7.5.3.2.2.6.8.8.e164.arpa'

[ukryule]

Great! This makes life much simpler.
According to the ENUM spec my new easy-to-remember all-purpose address will be:

7.2.4.8.7.5.3.2.2.6.8.8.e164.arpa

No longer will I have to use that impossible to remember email address (1st name)@(surname).org

Useless!

[clockwise_music]

Sounds like a kinda-good idea in theory, but as I live in Australia I think it's just not neccesary. I already have lots of contact details:

1. hotmail email
2. work email
3. work email 2
4. mobile
5. home number
6. work number

Naturally I give these out to different people for different contexts. There is no way I'd want everyone to know all of them!

My question is, What problem are they trying to solve?

Backwards

[captaineo]

The reverse of this would be even more useful to me - a mapping from DNS to phone number.

That way I could give out my stable, unchanging domain name, instead of my phone number - which changes depending on where I am and who I'm buying phone service from.

Maybe you could store a phone number in a special type of DNS record. Then you'd pay a small fee to a company that provides a toll-free number. People who want to get in touch with me call the toll-free number, type in the domain name, and the call connects. Computer-based phones or future stand-alone phones could let you type the DNS name instead of the phone number.

Australian anti-spam laws are weak

[Michael Wardle]

According to the Australian Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk E-Mail, Australia currently has mild opt-out spamming provisions, most of which are based on a voluntary code of conduct rather than legislation. Perhaps you were thinking of Europe, where there are opt-in rules which could be considered a sufficient deterrent to spammers.

Even so, would Australian laws apply if the spam originated from outside of Australia?

Re:What in the heck is a "URI" anyway? Did I miss.

[pldms]

Put simply:

URLs are a (proper) subset of URIs

URIs are the union of URLs and URNs

URLs are names for resources whose name is sufficient to resolve the resource. Eg nntp:<some server>/<message id>. To resolve it look at the URL. You have the protocol, server, and message id so you can just ask that server for the message named by the URL.

URNs aren't URLs. Eg news:<message id>. Resolving this requires knowing, say, a news server and its protocol.

So (as another poster said) mailto:<blah> is a URN since resolving to the actual mailbox <blah> requires more knowledge than the URI gives. http:<blah>, by contrast, is a URL. Resolving that is trivial given this URI.

Probably not entirely correct, but you get the idea. See the RFC above for tortuous detail.

Now IRIs, well...