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From: nvuxr!deej@bellcore.bellcore.com (David Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Speech on Telephone Privacy
Message-ID: <2219@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 16 Dec 89 19:17:31 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 578, message 4 of 7


In article <2168@accuvax.nwu.edu>, dcr0@gte.com (David Robbins) writes:
 
> Those of us (myself included) who presently have *unpublished*
> directory numbers are *paying* the telephone company to refuse to
> disclose our numbers to the *public*.  We are allowed to choose
> whether and to whom to disclose the numbers, and we are *never*
> *forced* to disclose the number as a consequence of our using the
> telephone.

Brrrp.  Well, define "the public".  If by "the public" you mean "any
joe schmuck who can read", you're right.  If you mean "anyone outside
the telco or LD carrier", you're wrong.  Any call through an IC, if
that IC offers an ANI delivery service, and the called party
subscribes to the ANI delivery service, results in your unpublished
phone number being disclosed to the called party.

Immediately. Irrevocably.  Without any possibility of blocking on your
part -- even if your local telco offers calling number delivery
blocking, you've subscribed to it, and you've blocked CND on this
call.  Congratulations; you've just been forced to disclose your
telephone number by using the telephone, and this has been going on
for several years.  (Anyone know exactly when ATT-C started offering
ANI delivery?)

> While it is true that our number is known to the local telco and the
> LD carrier, we have some expectation as a result of past and present
> practice that the number will not be given or sold to the general
> public.

Again, define "general public" and see my above comment.

> My number has been unpublished for quite a few years, and it
> has yet to fall into the hands of telemarketers.

Of course, you have no proof of this -- you haven't been bothered by
any telemarketers, which is pretty strong circumstantial evidence that
they don't have your phone number -- but you have absolutely no way of
knowing who knows your phone number.

> But the whole idea of unpublished numbers is to give the
> customer a certain level of control over the disclosure of the number.
> Caller ID does, in fact, change that, and does so to a degree I am
> personally uncomfortable with.

Again -- Caller*ID doesn't change that; it's been changed for several
years.  The general public just hasn't been aware of it.

> The more I think about it, the less value I can see in having
> Caller ID.  What on earth would I do with it?

I've had it on my work phone for three months now.  Yesterday I had
some conversations with other people at Bellcore about it, and we
talked about the value.  I realized that in the three months I had not
rejected any calls because I didn't want to talk to the person or
didn't recognize the caller -- but that for the past week (while I've
had the service temporarily turned off -- it's not really Caller*ID,
but part of an experimental package of services we're playing with
internally) I've missed it.

It was not so much the ability to screen calls that I liked, but just
the knowledge of who it was calling so I could prepare myself mentally
for the call.  If it was my boss, I'd be in a different frame of mind
than if it was a drinking buddy...  I just felt more comfortable
answering the phone knowing in advance who I was going to be talking
to -- even if it didn't overtly affect my behavior in answering the
phone.

If I could have CND, with the number able to be delivered from 80%+ of
the phones in the US, with an expectation that no more than about 10%
of callers would have blocking, I'd be willing to subscribe, and
probably pay about $3 a month for it.


David G Lewis					...!bellcore!nvuxr!deej
	(@ Bellcore Navesink Research & Engineering Center)
			"If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower."