the spam calls come from call farms that rotate numbers. they should be required to present a unified and verifiable caller ID
Phone systems can put whatever they want in caller ID, there should be verifiable reverse lookup to a valid registered number along with fines for violators
requiring an individuals ID to get a phone number is going to make the spam/phishing/malicious problem WORSE along with the enormous risks of that database being exposed/abused
This has existed for a very, very long time; its just a business feature you have to pay a lot of extra money for and that is generally unavailable to consumers.
Business customers get access to DNIS and ANI.
DNIS is the number that was dialed to reach the business. It is used for call routing and marketing analytics.
ANI is the phone number from which the call was made. It’s used again for call routing and analytics, but also billing. It’s how they knew where to send the bill back in the days of 1-900 numbers. Because real money is involved, it’s a pretty good bet it’s usually tied to the real entity.
You, as a mere consumer, are left with caller id, which no business user cares about.
If they wanted to stop spam they'd fix it so that carriers were required to ensure the numbers aren't spoofed. This would stop spam overnight.
"i dont have a phone"
"emergency contact?"
"911, no one else is better suited to respond to an emergency?"
So much for HIPAA huh?
As a population we used to be a lot less concerned with privacy. It was nicer in a way. It was a time when you didn't really worry about your identity getting leaked or stolen. If someone knew you were in the hospital, they might send you flowers or a card.
It was documented years ago that lawyers were buying cell phone location data from the carriers in order to drum up potential clients in hospitals.
Blame the data industry and big tech.
Get yourself locked up in the slammer for a night while carrying a fresh burner; observe them writing down your IMEI and IMSI; see if that makes you start getting robocalls.
In my 50 years of living this has always been the rule, not the exception whenever politics and technology collide.
Obviously reclaimthenet.org can post whatever they want on their site.
I'm curious about requiring all phone calls except to emergency services to cost a tenth of a cent. Or some amount that permits desired robocalling (prescription drug reminders for those not on the 'net) and excises spam calls.
what's your argument here? that what they posted is wrong? that this change isn't harmful?
Also, couldn’t this system be optional, numbers that are ID-verified are somehow flagged so (assuming I choose) when one calls my phone knows to let it through and when an unverified number calls it doesn’t ring?
This makes that easier and doesn't risk any of the legality if their should be illegal data sources or other likely illegal activities.
Tldr: This is a way to defeat vpns.
But still, I know they know who I am. Anyone with a cell phone in their pocket has no privacy. It’s the best tracking device ever.
Anyone who thinks anything at all can make that problem worse simply doesn’t understand that they have none.
I’d rather have zero privacy and zero spam calls than zero privacy and lots of spam calls. Obviously I’d prefer privacy and I think we need a constitutional amendment to that effect, but as far as showing our ID to eliminate spam in a world where zero privacy exists, sign me up.
Thanks for demonstrating that the end goal of privacy doomerism is passive acceptance.
Whether this is your real opinion or you’re astroturfing, you are complicit, and we are judging you.
Also, I've found Costco aluminum foil is substantially more durable than grocery store aluminum foil. I do not work/shill for Costco.
In the West we are declining. Implementing these kinds of control measures here looks like a power grab and an attempt to prepare the ground for war measures (information control and censorship). I don’t want this and nobody that I know IRL wants this. People know they are slowly being herded towards their death but nobody knows what to do about it.
China took over Honk Kong and lots of people complained about that before it happened but afterwards not so much.
right to privacy and speech will soon be very limited in aspects only relating and possible offline and very soon there will be nothing one can do about that
Take this seriously and get prepared. It’s not a drill, and it’s not something that the next administration is going to roll back, whoever ends up winning. You can’t vote your way out of this.
In the future, privacy and tech sovereignty will be a strictly offline affair.
By that time I had had 5 different land line numbers, from moving around.
I had my first phone installed back when you had to walk down to the phone company office and sit at a desk and fill out a form. Then a week later, a guy showed up at your home and put the wires in.
When I had my second line installed, it was after the Bell breakup, but again they didn't ask for ID, but I had to give them a $50 deposit to be used against phone rental and per-minute service.
Lots of services you'd rather have an anonymous account with (Google, Meta, Discord) are partially/fully mandating phone numbers as a spam mitigation strategy. Also this paves the way to internet connections/mobile internet requiring ID
Simultaneously, Signal is trying to raise the cost of accounts by requiring phone numbers. Although spammers can get mass amounts of phone numbers, it will at least raise the cost. Email 0 cents, phone # 10 cents–there will be less spammers with phone #s.
I don't think we'd have to worry about the spam if people only used usernames instead of phone numbers, because it would be massively harder for spammers to find your account and message you. But, with usernames, you don't get the contact discovery that allows for growth.
I don't understand why this is so controversial. If you follow the news on the slightest the game right now is feds raiding journalists, taking their devices and then trying to unmask their sources. It doesn't matter what XYZ is "for", when the stakes are this high we need to be protecting people full stop.
Do people remember the "No Call List" ? All that did was provider real phone numbers to telemarketers after they moved their operations to another country to avoid the laws.
How is this going to prevent robocalls ?
All this is really saying to me is: Some politicians got a bribe (or in the US called campaign contributions) to provide a new list of valid phone numbers along with personal information for use for marketing or other purposes.
I am very glad to see this change, because phone-based Fraud is a plague on the Elderly and other vulnerable members of society. And an incredible annoyance even to a security conscious professional.
The guard against intrusive and oppressive government is the Bill of Rights, not some easy ability to get a phone number anonymously.
Hahaha who am I kidding, that ship has sailed. It's a lost cause.
And if you think we need a new ammendment to strengthen it, i'm in for that as well.
These are all real solutions
Making "Privacy" easier is not a real solution. The panopticon will get you whether you use a VPN or a burner or whatever.
The only solutions are political.
I have to say, coming from "Lonestar1440" that implies quite the rebrand for Texas:
Texas: Just One Star Among Fifty Equals.
Edit: clarifications
No fee is not equivalent to free.
1) They aren't legal adults.
2) Protecting the Boomers again, who had it better than their parents and their children. Why protect the future when we can coddle the past instead.
3) Absurdly, most of HN will die on the "government ID required to vote" hill, but this is just fine now...
Come to think of it, when I get an EU SIM, it does start getting robocalls... as soon as I give the number to some Big Legitimate Business that is supposed to be observing GDPR and whatnot.
Come to think of it, from what I know about this "mass surveillance" bullshit, robocallers being an inside job makes perfect sense.
Whether we like it or not, ID is required to function in society these days. The public has, in general, decided they don't like the alternatives, and I would count myself among those who would prefer to have working phone service again without endless junk calls versus the hypothetical ability to go get a phone without ID.
And I would count you among the people who shouldn’t have a say in how these laws affect our right to privacy.
Not in the US. See this thread [1].
Why?
* Telephone service
* Internet service
* A rental apartment to live in and relevant utilities
* Food
* Clothing
* Entertainment
* Medical care
* A bank account
It has been so long that I can no longer clearly remember, but I think that I didn't have to present ID to get my job and get paid.
Maybe things are way worse over in Euroland? Or maybe US-based authoritarians have successfully used the threat of imaginary "Stranger Danger" to turn the screws tighter for access to some of those things over the past ten, twenty years? I know it's not medical care, internet access, food, clothing, or entertainment because I've changed providers for those fairly recently.
You absolutely cannot get a bank account without an ID either: KYC is a thing.
Finally, you must complete an I9 form for any new job, which requires (wait for it) an ID.
False choice. It's quite possible that this will not substantially reduce much less eliminate the junk calls.
It will substantially reduce my ability to obtain an anonymized number that no one knows about and has any reason to junk call. I don't get any junk calls on my anonymous numbers, if if I did, I'd toss that number and get another and the junk could not follow it unless whomever I was using the number with was the source of the leak and then I'd stop doing business with them in the future.
Past privacy violations are what are driving the scam calls, making their be a mandatory loss of privacy at the moment you get the number will not help.