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That’s definitely part of it. Phone numbers are the new SSNs - unique identifiers that never change and connect you across services - except you also hand them
by rafram 2y ago
That’s definitely part of it. Phone numbers are the new SSNs - unique identifiers that never change and connect you across services - except you also hand them out to everyone you meet. One might say it seems like a bad system!
- lolinder 2y ago> the new SSNs - unique identifiers that never change and connect you across services And just like SSNs both the "unique" and the "never change" are only true of the spherical cow version of the system. Phone numbers are actually substantially worse at being unique and unchanging, what with people in families sharing a phone or trading phone numbers, people forgetting to transfer the number when switching carriers, people intentionally switching numbers in an attempt to end spam calls... The number of ways to break the assumed invariants is actually quite high. See Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers [0]. [0] https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHOODS.md https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHO...
- dylan604 2y agosince COVID, i've had 3 new numbers. i'm sure that's an edge case, but it happens. my second number came when I brought my own device to a pre-pay plan on a new carrier that said my number was not able to be ported. then, when i upgraded phones, the pre-pay number was not eligible for carrying over to the new device. I know I'm not the first person to be unable to port a number, so calling a phone number something that never changes is a bit skewed
- rafram 2y agoYeah, I didn’t mean that they never change in reality, but that they’re treated as if they never change. (Same with SSNs.) I can only imagine how many hundreds of services I’d lose access to if I lost my number. Hours and hours talking to customer service.