What are the chances this will lead to online data privacy reform and corporate accountability for PII for all? or just…some?
It’s kinda funny how times change.
In Germany, it even used to be that your phone number, along with your name and address, was published in the phone book, by law. If you wanted to be delisted, you had to provide a valid reason, such as being stalked. Just because was not good enough. At every street corner was a phone booth with the phone book of your town with your name and address. At post offices, you could find phone books from other towns. (The phone system was run by the postal service, which was a government agency.)
Phone books were a bit of a plot point in Terminator. The terminator gets the list of Connors from the phone book and kills them in that order.
Why do we still still use phone numbers for communication? It’s a terrible idea. One unifying piece of information that if anyone gets they can use. Bah.
We should have a communication method that both sides consent to before allowing the connection. Either side can kill that connection at any time by revoking permission on either side. The contact info shouldn’t be the same for everyone either, but something ephemeral instead. Unique. A burner phone number that’s different to each person and only useful if the connection originates from the one meant to have that number.
It’s 2025. We still have “you have been hacked, give me gift cards to save your Google Chrome” style shit going on.
This sounds cool! Reminds me of SSH keys a bit!
It’s really the phone companies’ fault for stagnating instead of innovating.
There is no reason at this point for most people to have phone numbers at all. We have the technology today to throw the whole concept out the window.
Replace it with something where a stranger couldn’t guess how to contact a random person. Replace it with something where third parties can’t easily share your contact info.
You could even have both technologies at the same time to help transition. And we do, as users, but we still need phone numbers because our carriers don’t give us multiple options directly.
Phone numbers are based on requirements for a system that’s almost 150 years old now. Back when the numbers really meant locations and before people realized how easy it could be exploited to steal old people’s retirement money.
You still have to have some kind of unique identifier. What do you propose phone numbers are replaced with because I can’t think of anything that isn’t basically just the same but with a different flavour or actually is actively worse.
Your device and account credentials are unique enough to identify you on the carrier-level, SIM/eSIM as well. Ultimately, every time you share your contact info, it should be a unique code (QR would be convenient enough) generated by your cell provider. If it’s ever leaked, you just notify your carrier to burn it, and give the contact a new unique code. No two people should be given the same contact, and all of the contacts are simply correlated to your device by the carrier. Additionally, when sharing contacts via QR, they could be modified on the device-level to include e2e encryption keys, thus further securing the transmitted information, not at the trust-me-bro carrier level, but at the user-verifiable device level. If the carrier gets hacked, reset the identifiers, associate the new one in your text app to keep conversations going, and move on like nothing happened. You’ll still be better off than if your phone number was leaked. It’s not perfect, but it’d be a hell of a lot more secure than what we have now.
In other words: What if a billion dollar company made Signal, but with cell towers, and not as good?
QR would be convenient enough
My friend, that is not convenient. Phone numbers need to be memorable, and need to be transmittable offline without relying on technology. Old people use phones…
Phone numbers need to be memorable. A disposable unique contact does not. You can print a QR code, easily save it to a device, transmit it via nearly anything with a connectible screen. Of course you would want to launch it with alongside phone numbers, not in place of it, but this is what should be the next ‘innovation’ in cellular communication.
That said, it does pose the problem of contacting someone with a phone that isn’t your own, perhaps from jail. I’m sure they would never suggest putting an emergency contact chip in your hand for your own health and safety. No government would ever suggest something so silly. /sIf I want to contact a business though I know I need to dial 555-123-4568, and I know that because there was a little jingle at the end of the advert. But if they just flash up a QR code then do I just have to wait until the ad is on TV again? There’s a reason they don’t really put QR codes on TV but they do on YouTube where you can pause it, and queue up the video whenever you wanted.
It’s not an awful idea but it needs a bit of refinement. That needs to be some kind of way to associate a human readable identifier to the contact.
We use QR codes all of the time for websites but eventually that still boils down to a URL in plain text.
Businesses are a separate use case. Phone companies already handle separate use cases, where they use very short memorable numbers for specific purposes. They just need something similar, whether it’s keeping phone numbers, or using something slightly different. Probably some sort of simple alias.
It’s the phone companies that need to innovate, and the solution isn’t very hard.
This is HORRIBLE! That RICH people’s Information was Leaked! This needs to be PUNISHED BY DEATH so they Learn to ONLY leak POOR People’s information!
Guaranteed rich people’s phones are targeted for hacking more
