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"These virtual identifiers, whether it's a phone number or an email address or a domain name or a Twitter handle, are now the dominant way we contact someone."
by lkrubner 9y ago
"These virtual identifiers, whether it's a phone number or an email address or a domain name or a Twitter handle, are now the dominant way we contact someone."
That's a good argument for changing the law.
However, this is wrong:
"More than that, these IDs are becoming trusted ways to reach a specific person."
That is something that I would like to see, but that is definitely not the way things work now. If I fail to pay to renew a domain name, I lose it, just like if I fail to pay my phone bill, I lose it. I would like to see ids that belong to each person for life and which can not be sold or transferred. I'd especially like the postal service to offer me that option, so I would no longer need to give my physical address to strangers, but instead could simply give them my postal alias. But no such thing exists right now.
- Silhouette 9y agoI agree that your suggestion of some sort of official, permanent point of contact would be better. However, even with the proviso that you have to keep paying for a service to retain it, it seems to me that some sort of regulation giving the current user of a particular ID first refusal over renewing it and a clear warning before they lose access to it would be beneficial. Possibly some restriction on reusing the same ID for anyone else within a reasonable period, say a few years, would also be a good idea. The fact is that these IDs are being used for sensitive, important, often government-sanctioned purposes already, and protecting them as such is surely an improvement on the status quo.