3 ms·
More minor nitpick... the telephone analogy is a bit silly. You can get a burner phone, and networked computers are identifiable by a number: it's called an IP.
by lucideer 9y ago
More minor nitpick... the telephone analogy is a bit silly. You can get a burner phone, and networked computers are identifiable by a number: it's called an IP. It could even be persistently identifiable if it weren't for IPv4 address space exhaustion.
- tritium 9y agoYeah, I have to scratch my head about the whole anonymous lack of a unique number. Were IP addresses not part of early packet switched networks like ARPA net? Still, worse than IP addresses are IMEI numbers, on your person frequently, as you move from place to place, trackable in crowds, and from aircraft overhead.
- swiley 9y agoFurthermore, changing IMEI numbers is some kind of terrible federal crime.
- pmlnr 9y agoHe was talking about landline numbers.
- joe_the_user 9y agoBack in the day, there were a variety of ways to enter the landline network anonymously, from phone booths to whistling the right tones for call routing. For quite a while, there was a race between those seeking free long distance and companies trying to stop them.
- rb808 9y agoGiven the amount of spam calls I get now, landlines are pretty much anonymous too.
- Bartweiss 9y agoEven so - if 'cybercrime' and 'industrial espionage' are made possible by the lack of personal identifiers online, how are we supposed to understand telephone scams and pre-digital espionage? Landlines may have been unique identifiers in common usage, but they weren't identifiable when someone was seeking to misbehave. Which is exactly the problem with the metaphor.