Slashdot Mirror
Dragging Telephone Numbers Into the Internet Age
azoblue writes with this teaser from Ars Technica, presenting a tempting suggestion for online consolidation: "E-mail, IM, Facebook, phones—what if all of these ways to reach you over a network could be condensed into a single, unique number? The ENUM proposal aims to do just that, by giving everyone a single phone number that maps to all of their identifiers. Here's how it works, and why it isn't already widely used."
Great, then spammers only need one number to send you all sorts of spam in all kinds of different ways. And even better, they can try random numbers!
Isn't Google Voice already doing this? It seems to be for me.
Why would I want a "number" for that? That's why DNS was invented, so we could move forward from using numbers to identify things and use proper identifiers instead. This is a step backwards in many ways.
Like a social security number or tax id?
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
This is making many of the mistakes X.400 did, albeit on a smaller scale.
People want tokens that are easy to remember. Email addresses like "myname@example.com" are much more memorable than "C=US/OU=Example/FN=My/LN=Name" or "+1 234 456 6789". If someone's using this service, they're using an internet-capable device, so they can enter an alphanumeric address and don't need to remain compatible with Strowger's switch.
But I'm not quite sure why I would want to tie all my shiny new contact mechanisms to a 19th century relic controlled by the telcoms, entities which are sclerotic at best and downright evil at worst.
ENUM seems like the sort of thing that would happen if you got a bunch of fairly sharp techies together and told them that it was an axiomatic, foundational, truth that telephone numbers must remain relevant and central to communication. Within those constraints, they seem to have come up with a good solution. Those constraints, though, seem irrelevant. The internet, and its design philosophies, is simply better.
would you use the phone number as a universally unique id?
One user might have several phone numbers, while the one phone number might have several users.
Additionally, the phone number is not portable across national borders. You can not bring your Norwegian phone number and use it with an american registrar.
Additionally users might be forced at regular basis to change their phone numbers. Me for one, had to change my phone number when I changed employer.
Database designers have known this for ages. Always assign a new unique id to any row in a table. Ids that seem unique and stable might change. Even social security numbers might change.
Oh.. Who would want all their contact info to be collected in one global system available for all?
I do not want a single number, because I do not have a single identity.
I do not want my work to call me on my personal phone, so they don't have that number. But my job naturally requires some amount of phone work, so they all have *that* number. Makes sense, right?
"Good news, everyone!"
that corporations, governments, and scammers, can use to track us.
Best Slashdot Co
How the hell did this thread go so long without a Prisoner reference?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I prefer a mobile with just 10 data entry keys.
The user-friendliness of having to select something from a 150 entry drop-down or having to press every key (a different) multiple times is vastly overrated.
C'mon, if we can't convince the normals to use decent-strength passwords in their hotmail, and to stop saying "yes" to everything on Facebook, you want them to use public key crypto??
No sig for the moment.
We should rather use DNS for phone numbers, and then allow something like:
phone:cowboyneal@slashdot.org
Similar to “mailto:”.
Or one of
^(phone|voip):(//)?(cowboyneal@slashdot\.org|slashdot\.org/~cowboyneal/?)$
By the way: Why are URLs (URIs) so inconsistent?
I guess the voip and @ version is the cleanest one. But I’m not sure about the point of the “//”.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
1. Join an adult affiliate network and choose a website for promotion
2.
for (enum=0;enum=OVER9000;enum++)
{
SendMessageToEnum(enum,"Hi! Check out my new website: www.chickswithdicks.com");
}
3. ???
4. PROFIT!
Apple has "Mac vs PC", Microsoft has "Laptop Hunters", Linux has recession
What we really want though is not "one number", but "one use numbers", the same as Gishpuppy email addresses. That way you can leave your number with the girl in the bar, and when she decides that you were some annoying nerd and gets her brother to write it up in the men's loo you can just cancel it.
I would really not want to have one number misused that would also give my email address, skype, google chat and website to everyone!
Do you really want to have to dial +DEAD:BEEF:CAFE:123:4567:890A:BCDE:F?
This uses a well understood system (DNS, and in the future, DNSSEC) to use the same numbers you already have to link to other online identifiers, including IP addresses. So we get all the benefits of IPv6 without having to switch everyone to potentially 39 digit addresses in their phone.
What you propose would be the death of picking up girls in bars, that's for sure. How do you propose to convince them to spend that much time writing down their number?
And you'r not able to search the list using the 10 digit keypad on your phone?
I'm able to call noob only by pressing 666 :P
Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_book It's been around for 100 years.
OK...
I can do this. I am, after all,
a superhero!
I see nothing wrong with keeping email, IM, Facebook and whatever else separate from my phone number. Despite the conventional wisdom of this age, I have no desire to be "constantly connected" and reachable, much less have it all rolled into one convenient number. Besides the "one stop" hacking opportunity alluded to in someone else's comment above, it also strikes me as one more step towards a world of constant surveillance.
A single number to identify people would be just as powerful as a SSN or driver's license number. It would make fraud so much easier. Eventually people would compile databases tying these IDs to SSNs and would distribute those online. Then we would start seeing advisories to keep your single contact number a secret!
On the positive side, perhaps this would help to convince financial institutions that simply knowing someone's SSN and mother's maiden name doesn't prove anything about identity.
My email and my phone number are the two things in my life that are constantly subject to abuse by outsiders. (Spammers, telemarketers etc.) You have not made a convincing case why it's actually a good idea to extend merger them or to other aspects of my life.
I already have this. Its my email address. Everything I do on the Internet is keyed to an email address.
Email is email, obviously.
XMPP for IM, uses my email address.
Facebook I don't use, I actually have a live so I don't have time to sit around and convince others that I have one or to collect friends for the popularity contest.
Phones - If I email you, you'll get my phone number. This won't be an issue for too much longer I don't think, its just going to take everyone finally going to VoIP (cringe)
So uhm, this is a solution searching for a problem I take it?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
A single number to identify people would be just as powerful as a SSN or driver's license number. It would make fraud so much easier.
While you are right in practice, it doesn't need to be so in theory.
On /. you are "CopaceticOpus". That is, in the slashdot universe you have a single number which identifies you. Does that make you more vulnerable to /. fraud?
No, you have a password which you use to prove that you are the person identified by the name CopaceticOpus.
The problem with SSNs is that they don't have a password.
Using a single identifier isn't a danger in itself; it just magnifies the underlying problem of not having a secure way to establish which people the identifiers identify (and which they don't).
in 50 years people will never have heard of phone numbers
Considering that today, we still know of the phonograph, telegraph poles, and telegrams.... human nature and socities memory doesn't change as quickly as you think, even when it comes to outmoded technology.
i've thought about this before - i think what one needs is a single PRIVATE number - that never gets given out to anyone - and you have a bunch of private ALIAS/Reference numbers which you yourself point to your private number - then you only give out the aliases - and if one of the aliases gets overloaded, you pull the plug on the alias, create a new alias, and then direct that new alias towards your private number.
10 buttons? How about 1 button. You press it, and say "Call Bill at FooCompany" and it looks up FooCompany and then figures out who Bill is. Speech recognition will eventually be good enough on low-power devices for this.
In reviewing the comments, I did not notice anyone raising the idea of wanting to (or needing to) change numbers (except one who noted that they like getting a new number when they move so that old acquaintances can be dropped). If the phone number becomes the primary hook on which all other identities are hung, what happens when you want an unlisted number or have need to change numbers? Victims of domestic abuse, some State employees (like corrections officers), and others have reasons to either switch numbers or request an unlisted number. In Minnesota, corrections officers can even request vehicle license plates that are registered to the State so that the inmates can't use their personal license plate numbers as a means to have friends on the outside look up personal information on them (the corrections officers).
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
KlaymenDK (713149) wins the gold medal!
The basic concept of identity management espoused in the article is sound, but it mustn't be tied to a person's physical identity. People have varying needs from identities, and must be free to create and destroy them as they see fit. Any system that is used must recognize that. Further, as it would happen anyway, building it in increases the trust of the system. If I know that KlaymenDK might have alter egos then I can act accordingly. That versus being fooled that there is only one identity associated with a physical person which would enable fraud.
What should be attached to an identity? Anything that the user wants, including an escrow account (no direct funding should be attached), access to banking, websites, phones, buildings, etc. But the sensitive ones on that list (again, direct funding, banks, and in some cases building access, etc.) require the identity to be authenticated along with some extra identity that verifies it is the real, unique person. This could be accomplished in various ways, but building it in to a physical device (eg, a mobile phone) with a single password (for encryption-based authentication) and possibly biometric authentication as well.
I don't like the idea with the .tel domain
like we have Mr. Joe Smith from amstadam, and Mr. Joe Smith from Las Vegas (and my guess is that there is more Joe Smith's out there)
So if one buy smith.tel and sets it up for his family, så his "number" is joe.smith.tel
Then what about the other smith, what will be his "number"
And so on with other names.
Why not use a sub-domain to do the same.
So "tel.smith.com" is a "number" or tel.joe.smith.MyDOMAIN.com is a "number"
Or then again more simple, a producole, like http, https, ftp, etc, then just tel://[And all the domain stuff]
Really? Seems to me that it factors into 5, 887, and -1
NUMBERS, wow, great idea! After that, we'll need some kind of DIRECTORY to figure out what the numbers map to.
Ironically, current telephone architecture is better than current Internet technology (any telephone number, anywhere, can be portable; IPs-- NOT!), and they want to "marry telephone numbers to the Internet"? Why not marry the Internet to telephone numbers instead?
People, numbers are ADDRESSES. They're supposed to imply location, otherwise, why not use a more intuitive identifier, like [your name]? This is a terrible idea.
In the really, really, REALLY old days of telephony, there were no numbers. You rang up the operator and asked to be connected to the Smith house, and the operator connected your plug to their socket.
Once that stopped scaling, numbers were used because it made looking them up on a plug board a lot faster. When automatic dialing came, that scaled similarly because you could cascade stepper relays to do the dialing.
But nowadays telephone switches have more in common with Cisco routers than they do the old gear. There's no reason that you have to number stuff anymore. The instant messaging folks - particularly jabber - are closer to what we need than the old tired PSTN numbering scheme.
Just as long as they are "those kooks" and not the "kooks" on your side, right?