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."
Jenny, I got your number
I'm gonna make you mine
Jenny, I got your number
86.75.30.9
John
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!
All I can think of is SPAM. I understand the idea and sometimes I think it'd be a great tool (especially if you move ISP's etc, everything would move with you kind of like redirecting your real mail when you move house but with less hassle) but I consider my privacy (what little we have left in this world) way more important than having a single identifier.
A single IP6 address could be enough for all those things.
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.
Why would you want to keep the telephone number?
The telephone number is a good example of a situation where the technical factor prevailed over the human factor. Numbers are abstract and difficult to remember for most people. And since its invention we have needed to use lists to associate these numbers to things we actually can remember, such as names.
I think it will go completely the other way, and that in 50 years people will never have heard of phone numbers. The identifier will be the email address, and if I want to call someone I select that address and press "call", and a VOIP connection will be made. If I want to IM or mail, I press other buttons.
The email address is easy to remember, it has build-in identification of the purpose you want to use it for (private, business, ...), can already be used for several types of communication (mail, jabber) and is completely transparent to location
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.
You mean like the .tel domain?
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?
ENUM is a temporary workaround to make SIPURI and TelURI compatible. Once everyone start using sipuri, enum will phaseout. joe@airtel.com is easier to remember than +918764233906
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?
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that corporations, governments, and scammers, can use to track us.
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Pfft, phone numbers. That's so 19th century. They really should come up with something a lot more modern. Ahhh yes, I can see it now:
"Oh my number? Sure, no problem. Do you have a pen? Here we go: f3a9d4c1-0bff-4792-bf3b-09513ef61af8. It forwards to my home, though, so don't call too late. You can also use it to text me, or IM me. Looking forward to hearing from you!"
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?
The ENUM proposal is essentially asking for DNS lookup as a public service run by government or other regulatory bodies. First of all, as you said, why don't we just use names? And second, I'm not sure we want public DNS run by government or regulatory bodies. We already have community-run free DNS service such as http://freedns.afraid.org/ or commercial free service like http://www.dyndns.com/ or http://www.zoneedit.com/. If you're worried that free services would go away, a lot of domain name registries are also offering DNS service at nominal fee, and they would be less likely to vanish. Several people can share the cost of a domain.
All people need to do is to find creative uses of domain names. I think this is the hard part.
I once had a signature.
So, instead of having a separate email, IM, facebook, phone number, etc we have one unique number? Great so if we forget our unique number we are totally screwed rather than just a little bit screwed. No thanks, if this is the future I'll just stay in the digital stone age.
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
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.
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.
I'm the author of the piece. Most comments in my opinion make the mistake of saying: I want this or that to be my identifier. Or I don't want a universal identifier.
The reality is: there are two identifiers that are on most business cards. Phone numbers and e-mail adresses. Both could be used in a much more advanced way. No matter which way you look at it the telephone number won't go away. ENUM would enable you to use it in multiple ways.
Use Adsense for Charity
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2.
for (enum=0;enum=OVER9000;enum++)
{
SendMessageToEnum(enum,"Hi! Check out my new website: www.chickswithdicks.com");
}
3. ???
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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!
Why, in this day and age, are we talking about NUMBERS? Do we address websites via IP address? No, we have DNS.
Why isn't there a DNS for phones? I pick a name, perhaps even something as simple and unique as MY EMAIL ADDRESS, and then anyone who knows my email address can contact me. Or, just like DNS, I can set up any number of unique names for various things (my-recruiters@gmail;) that point to some sort of numeric based phone.
You could even call it Phone Name System.
Thanks,
--
Matt
Skynet prefers a barcode burned into your forearm.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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
I can't believe nobody's figured out that ENUM is simply the Mark of the Beast and is going to be burned into chips that will implanted in our brainstems.
ENUM spelled backwards is MUNE and it's on the MUNE that they have the secret military bases where they're going to send those of us that won't use our ENUMs.
The only thing that can save us now is when the prophesied "Woman of the North" comes down from Alaska to use her secret mental powers to organize the Wolverines(!) so we can defeat the forces of ZOG and usher in the return of Jesus and Ronald Wilson Reagan where they will reign together for 1000 years.
Don't you guys read your bibles and World Net Daily? megamerican, where are you when we really need you?
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
"Using numbers made it easier to train people to operate the exchanges. (Women were chosen because their voices worked better in exchanges.)"
No Women were used because the messenger boys they replaced were proto-hackers and kept doing nasty tricks to the customers.
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A number is very easy to give over the phone. Easier than an e-mail address. This as so many letters sound very similar and so.
In practice I have been giving my fax number over the phone so they could fax me their e-mail address. Works great! Particularly considering I am often working with Chinese and other Asians with sometimes very poor spoken command of English. Numbers then go remarkably easy.
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?
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0118 999 881 999 119 725........3
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.
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...
Steely Dan? Oh, I thought he fucked up the Phil Collins song.
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.
I do that in Gmail with plus-addressing. For instance, if I get spam from Simetrical+dontsendhere@gmail.com, I can just block all mail from that address. Haven't had it happen yet, though.
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
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.
The problem with ENUM is that the data is stored in DNS. Which means it is harvestable and intended to be cached. I don't _want_ to share my email addresses, Facebook ID, work, cell and home phone numbers and IM addresses with anyone and everyone. That's just stupid.
ENUM is a Bell-Head protocol invented before spam. It was meant to be easily mirrored between carriers, with the standard behaviour of "caller pays".
What we really need is a protocol that will ask _my software_ where the call should be sent. The software is then able to decide based on the originating details if I want to receive the call, and what endpoint/protocol it should be sent to.
That's what I want. Invidividualised call control at the point of address resolution.
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.