Dragging Telephone Numbers Into the Internet Age 239
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."
Spam spam spam... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't want a "number" (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean... (Score:4, Insightful)
Like a social security number or tax id?
X.400 all over again (Score:4, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Oh joy, another Universal ID (Score:3, Insightful)
that corporations, governments, and scammers, can use to track us.
I am not a number! I am a free man! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why would you want to keep the telephone number (Score:5, Insightful)
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!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Single person != single identity (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
Numbers? That's what URLs are for! (Score:3, Insightful)
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 “//”.
The simple guide to make money online (Score:2, Insightful)
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!
Re:I don't want a "number" (Score:2, Insightful)
For individuals, I think a number would be a cleaner approach. The overhead of DNS shouldn't be wasted on something like this when you can already associate phone numbers with contact lists on your cell phone or PDA. When I call someone, I just go to their name in my address book; I barely know the cell phone numbers of anyone in my family.
If you were at a payphone after the battery on your gadgets runs out what would you be more likely to remember, a phone number, or a dns name?
Doing the name to number mapping on your cellphone only fixes the problem from that one phone. DNS for phone numbers fixes it everywhere.
What we really want though (Score:3, Insightful)
I would really not want to have one number misused that would also give my email address, skype, google chat and website to everyone!
Re:How about using IP6? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:Why would you want to keep the telephone number (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:You mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
I was just providing an example of a numbering system for a large location that everyone in said location uses.
However, this would be silly to do IMO (like the SSN). You get owned on one account and you are owned everywhere. There are advantages to having different systems for different resources.
Re:Isn't this backwards? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just say no (Score:3, Insightful)
Danger of single numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Enum: why you want it (Score:2, Insightful)
I already have a unique ID (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Why would you want to keep the telephone number (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Spam spam spam... (private# and aliases) (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Speech recognition (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Changing numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Gold Medal (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:Been done: .tel domain (Score:1, Insightful)
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]
Re:It's not the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Seems to me that it factors into 5, 887, and -1
Re:X.400 all over again (Score:2, Insightful)
That being said there are technological solutions to the problem, when I meet someone in person I should not be verbally relaying my address (phone number or email...) we should be doing some digital vcard exchange over Bluetooth or something between our phones. Over the phone I should not be verbally relaying information that is more clearly conveyed in text. When ordering my air plane tickets over the phone (sometimes the human operators can pull off things that the online interface is not letting me do in booking) I should simply be able to switch to instant/text messaging the operator and clearly relay any text as long as I do not hit the wrong key on my damn virtual keyboard...
Re:Spam spam spam... (private# and aliases) (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Why numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:End Times (Score:1, Insightful)
Just as long as they are "those kooks" and not the "kooks" on your side, right?