Citing Threats, Entrepreneur Wants to Quit Caller ID Venture

The New York Times > Technology > Citing Threats, Entrepreneur Wants to Quit Caller ID Venture

This is fascinating. When callerID just became available for residential customers, phone companies were forced to ask their customers whether they wanted to opt out. A very large proportion of customers did (I wonder, actually if there are any figures for that). Even now, if you are getting your landline phone, you are offered the option to "block caller ID" but for a fee of course. With the advent of cell phones, caller ID was not an issue for some reason. Cellphone companies didn't even offer the opt-out version. In fact, when they got accused of overcharging customers because they were charging for incoming calls (in the US, this was/is not an issue in Europe), cell phone companies actually cited caller ID as a feature that would allow their customers to decide whether they wanted to take (and, by definition, pay for) a particular phone call or not. At the time, they claimed that if someone was blocking caller ID why would you want to talk to them anyway (framing the "blockers" as them shady people).

What's curious is that initially, caller ID played hell with some of the assumptions telephone users have gotten used to make about their phone calls - a measure of obscurity was taken away - i.e. you couldn't repeatedly call and hang up on your ex anymore because now they would KNOW it was you without having to actually TALK and CONFRONT you... ouch...(then *69 appeared as a feature, or was it before caller ID? In any case, it was extremely unnerving but offered enough loopholes to make it manageable).

Because cellular phones made callerID simply an aspect of the technology, these expectations of obscurity never came up. In fact, some people now get annoyed about calling landline phones because they actually have to introduce themselves in order to be recognized and have to spell out their phone # instead of simply saying - you now have it on your phone, don't you? This loss of introductions is a very little thing, but my grandmother still gets a little freaked when I pick up the phone and say "Hi grandma!" before she has a chance to say hello... On the other hand, I find myself a little disconcerted when I actually have to introduce myself over the phone to someone - its such an odd, almost uncommon thing for me.

So here comes Star38, advertising a service that would not only let you block caller IDs, but to successfully pretend to be someone else entirely. A license to lie that apparently bothered a number of people (exciting a number of others). What I am curious about, however, is the sentence in the article that says people were concerned about their privacy... whose privacy? the giving or the receiving end? The very curious thing is that existence of Star38 would actually make the whole thing of caller ID safer, by make it very clear to cellphone users that they simply can not believe their callerID (thus ruining some phisher-business, no wonder they sent death-threats). It doesn't just give a license to lie, it actually teaches everyone a good measure of caution. The caller may not be who you think they are... We might have to re-learn to introduce ourselves and to stop relying on the ID feature... a step back or forward?