3 ms·
There’s a lot of opportunity to tighten up controls around sim swapping. But I’d be cautious about this idea being used to introduce phone number registration l
by AmericanChopper 7y ago
There’s a lot of opportunity to tighten up controls around sim swapping. But I’d be cautious about this idea being used to introduce phone number registration legislation (outlawing burner phones). Legislators have tried and failed to do this at least two times that I know about. Legislatively, this could even be achieved indirectly, by creating the correct liability regulations for service providers.
- im3w1l 7y agoDoesn't creating liability typically cause a lot of undesired side effects? Like poor and marginalized people being unable to swap since they everyone knows people like that are up to no good. Seems better to mandate a reasonable process. Like if you have connected your sim to your identity you prove your identity to swap. And if you have not, then you can swap by physically presenting the old sim.
- AmericanChopper 7y agoRegulating in general causes a lot of unintended side effects, but creating new liability is certainly one of the more effective ways of generating them. In this specific case (depending on how cynical you are), you might see such a side effect as simply a potential unintended consequence, or you might see it as a potential opportunity for law makers to stealthily pass legislation/regulation they have previously failed to pass. There’s no way to say that any changes will even come from this letter at the moment. But if you think compulsory phone number registration is a bad thing (and there’s plenty of reasons to be against it), then I’d suggest you pay attention to how this issue develops, as it would be the perfect opportunity to sneak it in.