Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: gordon@sneaky.uucp (Gordon Burditt) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Caller ID Privacy Question Message-ID: Date: 7 Sep 89 01:42:00 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Lines: 86 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 351, message 5 of 5 X-GATEWAY-WARNING: original 'Date' value is not valid USENET syntax X-Original-Date: Mon Sep 4, 1989 at 18:03:25 cdt > [Moderator's Note: I wonder why no one has yet suggested simply having the > device transmit the *name* of the caller, rather than the phone number, > since this would (a) identify the caller by the name under which the telco > carried him in its records; (b) probably be the same name under which I > had made your aquaintence; and (c) protect the private phone number of the > caller. In other words, the little box would read out, "Dr. Brown at home" > or "Smith Telemarketing Co." etc...the same purpose would be served. PT] I have numerous objections to this: - I suspect at least 10% of the households will have a member highly insulted to be identified as *Mr.* when they are *Mrs.* or vice versa, or to be identified as their child or parent. This alone will generate enough bad feeling and charges of sexism to make it a bad idea. The phone company needs to promote separate lines for husbands and wives and have the idea well-accepted before trying this. - It greatly confuses the distinction between telephone numbers and names. Many people will think that the phone company is doing something it can't do - identify which person is using the phone (by fingerprints?). The technically uninformed may be even more unwilling to call "hot lines" even if the hot lines don't have Caller-ID and say so. We have a voice mail system at work which does identify the caller or callee by name or both to the receptionist (inside lines only - outside lines are identified by some code meaning "outside line" and maybe identifying which outside line) when the call gets forwarded or busy/na-forwarded. Somehow, the line/name association is programmed into the system. Voice mail users and the receptionist can get confused with the two-people-sharing-one-line problem. I'm not sure how this can be handled other than one person doesn't get call-answering messages taken, and the other gets messages for both. The person who doesn't get call-answering messages taken probably never bothers to check voice mail. - Use of this information by a customer service department is likely to screw up the already blurred distinction between the Visa cards of Mr. Smith, his father, and his adult son, all at the same address. - Names are not unique. I don't want my calls blocked just because some jerk with my name sells swampland out of his home. - I don't want to block calls from Charles M. Sanchez's medical office just because Charles M. Sanchez's kids make nuisance calls from his home. - A company name alone isn't enough. For example, "Radio Shack" identifies at least dozens of entirely separate locations with thousands of phones in my area code, plus the warehouses, factories, and corporate headquarters. (some of these have PBX's, but they do not share them between locations.) - I wouldn't want to block all calls from a company I do business with just because their fax machine keeps calling my voice number. The phone company will not know which lines are fax lines. But it would still be nice to block the fax calls until I can get the correct fax number onto lists in each of too many departments. - When I was at RPI, I had to have a call traced. Phone company records identified the caller as a pay phone at 110 Eighth Street, and they couldn't give any more specific information. Further examination of phone company records would have revealed enough pay phones at 110 Eighth Street to make a mile-high tower of them on top of the administration building, to say nothing of the non-pay phones. A large area around that had no phones at all (according to the records, which obviously had the billing address). (They finally gave me the NUMBER. It took about 5 minutes to identify it with a campus directory.) Does this mean I would have a choice of blocking both the alumni association and pay phones in the dorms, or neither (assuming I was still in the same area code)? - Caller-ID should provide a "handle" that can be used to identify a line to services like Call Block, Distinctive Ring, etc., so suggestions that Caller-ID display names but Call Block accept numbers only destroy much of the usefulness of having both. Gordon L. Burditt ...!texbell!sneaky!gordon PS: It would be really nice, though, to have something in the caller-ID that identifies: business vs. residential vs. government telemarketing call vs. anything else No. of unresolved complaints to Better Business Bureau against this organization