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#phone#privacy#calls#numbers#spam#number#government#don#going#internet
Discussion (65 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
China took over Honk Kong and lots of people complained about that before it happened but afterwards not so much.
Also, I've found Costco aluminum foil is substantially more durable than grocery store aluminum foil. I do not work/shill for Costco.
Indoor dining: Yes.
Died suddenly: No.
Either you care about privacy all of the time, or you don't really care about it very much after all. And when people care seems to split along red/blue ideology.
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
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.
So much for HIPAA huh?
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.
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.
You can have privacy on a phone using GrapheneOS.
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
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://signal.org:8443/blog/private-contact-discovery/
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.
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.
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.