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."

Comments

Spam spam spam...

[michelcolman]

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!

Already there?

[Cornwallis]

Isn't Google Voice already doing this? It seems to be for me.

I don't want a "number"

[jbb999]

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.

You mean...

[Capt James McCarthy]

Like a social security number or tax id?

X.400 all over again

[argent]

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.

Cute hack...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Why on earth..

[Nomeko]

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?

Single person != single identity

[KlaymenDK]

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?

Re:Single person != single identity

[Octorian]

I agree with you completely on this notion of a person having multiple identities. I often run into other people who I wish would get the message.

At best, we need two identities. Basically, a work identity and a personal identity. (Of course in reality its quite common to have multiple work identities depending on your specific situation, but they're rarely all actually necessary.)

One thing that makes no sense to me, however, is all the people out there who use their work identity *as* their personal identity. Often these people may be the same types who "don't use a computer at home" and thus do all their computing at work. Or maybe they simply don't understand that its actually a good idea to keep them separate. Probably the only thing that'll knock them in-line is a surprise hostile layoff. (which may not be likely everywhere, but you always have to expect it as a possibility)

Re:Why would you want to keep the telephone number

[MrMr]

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.

Re:Please no!!!

[Abreu]

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??

Re:Why would you want to keep the telephone number

[Nomeko]

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

Just say no

[LiteralBoy]

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.

Danger of single numbers

[CopaceticOpus]

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.

I already have a unique ID

[BitZtream]

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?

On SSN fraud, and identifiers vs. authenticators

[jonaskoelker]

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).

Re:Spam spam spam... (private# and aliases)

[johnrpenner]

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.