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I can fix this overnight: make a five-digit number anyone can text that grants them a small one-time payment from the last caller, with the telco covering any p

I can fix this overnight: make a five-digit number anyone can text that grants them a small one-time payment from the last caller, with the telco covering any payments they cannot collect.

coldpie 3y ago
Me too: make receiving international-sourced calls opt-in. Done.
the8472 3y ago
have another one: replace short phone numbers with ipv6 addresses. prefix owned by telco, customers can generate random suffixes. hand out random numbers every time you need to provide a number and delete them if you no longer need to receive calls from the other end. The contact you gave to the shipping company for your new washing machine? doesn't need to exist longer than a few weeks. The numbers can be passed around as QR codes or generated by an app to be pasted into forms.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Wouldn't making phone numbers so long be a problem? It would be a problem for me.
  - the8472 3y ago
    Depends on your processes. Digital ones should handle them fine. In person you could use those good old business cards (each card now with its own number!). Over a phone call... well, the other side should already have that number on the phone and can save it.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I was thinking in terms of remembering and manually dialing them. Perhaps I'm the only person left who still does that, though.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  I love it. I love that people could just cease calls from stalkers or illegal collections calls. I'd certainly delete old numbers used by people I'd want to be able to contact me, that's a bit of a downside.
cryptonector 3y ago
The problem is caller ID spoofing. When you start getting billed for calls you "made" (but didn't) you won't like this "fix".
- jasonjayr 3y ago
  The callerid would be moot for this scheme. The real trace is the AMI information that the telco has for billing and peering, but is not part of the Caller ID data. The Telco knows exactly which line that call originated from, and knows who is responsible for paying for that connection.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  That's kinda what I want to happen: if a telco allows my number to call their customers, their customers claim payments from them, that telco attempts to claim payments from my telco, but, oops, there's no paper trail where I allowed my number to be used that way. Every telco would suddenly have ways to accurately trace a call back to the source and would not allow numbers to be spoofed without verification that the owner is allowing it.
earthboundkid 3y ago
This is already a thing. Crooks create a 1-900 number and then use stolen identities to call it from other phone accounts. They managed to rack up a couple of thousand dollars in charges on Verizon when they stole my identity in 2015.

I can fix this overnight: make a five-digit number anyone can text that grants them a small one-time payment from the last caller, with the telco covering any payments they cannot collect.

coldpie 3y ago

Me too: make receiving international-sourced calls opt-in. Done.

the8472 3y ago

have another one: replace short phone numbers with ipv6 addresses. prefix owned by telco, customers can generate random suffixes. hand out random numbers every time you need to provide a number and delete them if you no longer need to receive calls from the other end. The contact you gave to the shipping company for your new washing machine? doesn't need to exist longer than a few weeks. The numbers can be passed around as QR codes or generated by an app to be pasted into forms.

JohnFen 3y ago
Wouldn't making phone numbers so long be a problem? It would be a problem for me.
- the8472 3y ago
  Depends on your processes. Digital ones should handle them fine. In person you could use those good old business cards (each card now with its own number!). Over a phone call... well, the other side should already have that number on the phone and can save it.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I was thinking in terms of remembering and manually dialing them. Perhaps I'm the only person left who still does that, though.
plagiarist 3y ago
I love it. I love that people could just cease calls from stalkers or illegal collections calls. I'd certainly delete old numbers used by people I'd want to be able to contact me, that's a bit of a downside.

cryptonector 3y ago

The problem is caller ID spoofing. When you start getting billed for calls you "made" (but didn't) you won't like this "fix".

jasonjayr 3y ago
The callerid would be moot for this scheme. The real trace is the AMI information that the telco has for billing and peering, but is not part of the Caller ID data. The Telco knows exactly which line that call originated from, and knows who is responsible for paying for that connection.
plagiarist 3y ago
That's kinda what I want to happen: if a telco allows my number to call their customers, their customers claim payments from them, that telco attempts to claim payments from my telco, but, oops, there's no paper trail where I allowed my number to be used that way. Every telco would suddenly have ways to accurately trace a call back to the source and would not allow numbers to be spoofed without verification that the owner is allowing it.

earthboundkid 3y ago

This is already a thing. Crooks create a 1-900 number and then use stolen identities to call it from other phone accounts. They managed to rack up a couple of thousand dollars in charges on Verizon when they stole my identity in 2015.