Phone privacy WARNING: Supposedly to control telemarketing calls, the FCC is considering requiring ID, a verified address, a prior phone number, and a police background check to get a phone number.
Hopefully the 3ed party reseller prepaid vendors who do not require ID would respond by selling data-only plans and setting them up not to use SMS and thus not to require a phone number at all.
Signal could then respond to this by allowing new accounts to be activated without a phone number. A phone number is needed to make voice calls. It is not needed to use Signal except at setup at this time and there are other encrypted messenger systems that don't use phone numbers at all. The web doesn't need a phone number for sites not demanding any form of verification or not using a login. For 15 years I used the Internet without phone service, I may well be going back to that.
If the ID requirement passes, I will probably NOT be keeping phone service unless I can get a foreign country SIM and use it in roaming mode.
Hopefully a year or two would pass before they realize making this work requires also having coffeeshops, libraries, universities, stores etc demand ID to use the wifi.
This garbage is on top of the age verification crap and Google's plans to integrate Play Integrity checking into recaptha.
The FCC needs to remember that most telemarketing alls are already illegal and do NOT originate inside the US. If they do, it would require a data link from a boiler room in another country to a business class landline here
#ID #privacy
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