How we got it wrong on Calling-Number ID [RISKS] Risks Digest 24.05

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Something I havebeen saying for years finally gets recognized djf

Begin forwarded message:


Date: 25 Sep 2005 23:37:03 -0700
From: Geoff Kuenning <geoff () cs hmc edu>
Subject: Mea culpa: How we got it wrong on Calling-Number ID

Back in the early 90's, U.S. phone companies began rolling out the  
service
known as "Caller ID" (really Calling Number ID, or CNID).  Early  
adopters
were very pleased with the feature; it helped them to avoid  
telemarketers
and occasionally to dodge inconvenient friends.

Then a few privacy advocates noticed that there was a dark side: if
you called a local business, it could capture your number with CNID
and add you to a telemarketing list.  Suddenly CNID changed from a
beneficial service to a nefarious plot.

An anti-CNID campaign ensued, culminating in California's decision to
require telephone companies to offer free CNID blocking as a  
condition of
rolling out the service.  At the same time, privacy advocates  
(including me
and many other RISKS subscribers) publicized the downsides of CNID:
unintentionally revealing your (possibly unlisted) phone number,  
confusing
the concept of calling number with the identity of the calling  
person, etc.
The campaign was successful: when CNID was rolled out, something like  
50% of
Californians chose to block their number by default.

Fast forward approximately a decade.  I recently switched local phone
providers (finally freeing myself from the clutches of Verizon, neé GTE,
after a 25-year quest) and got rid of my CNID blocking in the process.
Rather than advocating against CNID, I've now changed my tune and am  
trying
to convince my blocked friends to unblock.

What happened?  The answer is simply that I was wrong about the evils of
CNID, and wrong about the (perceived lack of) benefits.  That error  
arose
primarily from an inability to correctly predict the future.  In  
particular,
the following forces have reduced the evils and increased the benefits:

1. The predicted data collection by small businesses never happened.  It
   wasn't worth the effort.  Businesses didn't get much benefit from  
knowing
   that somebody at 555-1234 had called to inquire about mattress  
prices;
   their telemarketing money was better spent on buying phone lists  
that
   included names and demographic data.

2. Larger businesses had 800 numbers that included Automatic Number
   Identification (ANI), which wasn't bothered by caller ID blocking  
anyway,
   so the people with lots of funds were never stopped from  
telemarketing.

3. The unforeseen Federal Do-Not-Call List has become an effective  
defense
   against telemarketing, so revealing your telephone number isn't  
much of a
   problem anyway.

4. The rise of cellphones means that we are starting to see a true
   one-to-one association between phone numbers and people, so CNID is
   becoming the caller ID it was once billed as being.

5. Most cellphone plans include CNID as part of the package, and some  
local
   plans are also offering it as a no-cost option, increasing the  
number of
   people who depend on CNID working.

6. A new generation of CNID signaling allows short text information  
to be
   transmitted along with the calling number, so that the recipient can
   identify the caller even if they have never seen the number before.

In addition, in 20-20 hindsight many of our criticisms seem  
overstated.  For
example, we argued that since CNID doesn't identify the individual, you
never really knew who was calling.  That's true enough, but do my  
family and
friends care whether it is I or my wife calling to arrange a visit?  We
argued that a stranded teenager calling from a pay phone might have  
his call
rejected, but would a parent with a teen out on a date really turn down
calls from an unknown number?

I think the lesson here is that we need to remember to be humble, and to
avoid crying wolf about the RISKS we perceive.  Overall, CNID's  
benefits far
outweigh its drawbacks, and we have done society a disservice by  
encouraging
people to block it.  We were right to point out the potential  
weaknesses and
incorrect marketing claims, but we erred in encouraging so many  
people to
unnecessarily block their phone numbers, inconveniencing their  
friends and
family while gaining almost no real benefit.

Geoff Kuenning   geoff () cs hmc edu   http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/

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