THE ANSWERING machine flashes. “You have 238 messages,” the synthesised voice begins cheerily. “And 237 of them are solicitations to buy herbal Viagra, extend your genitalia or to help a former dictator retrieve his millions . . . ”
Imagine your frustration if unsolicited phone calls started bothering you as much as junk e-mails. Well, if internet telephony continues to grow at its current pace, then “voice spam” could be the next bane of our technology-led lives. As voiceover internet protocol emerges to challenge conventional telephony, marketers are seeking ways to mine phones’ internet addresses to make automated sales calls. A firm called Qovia has already developed software for detecting these IP addresses and sending phones recorded messages by the thousand.
But that could be just the start. What if, armed only with your landline phone number, spammers could bombard you all at once via e-mail, mobile phone, fax, SMS and instant message? The scenario is not as far-fetched as it sounds. A quiet revolution is taking place in the telecommunications industry that has barely been mentioned in the mainstream press. Yet its outcome will determine your right to privacy — from your freedom to avoid telemarketers to the Government’s ability to tap into your conversations.
At its heart is a plan to turn ordinary phone numbers into internet domain addresses. The Government-backed initiative — known as electronic number mapping, or Enum — is designed to let others reach us wherever we happen to be. We would store all our contact details, from fax to mobile, in a single online account attached to our personal phone number. Anyone could use this number to access our personal web page, from where they could contact us.
The Department of Trade and Industry, backed by the telecoms industry, is keen to bring Enum to the UK, and has begun a consultation to determine how. According to the DTI’s vision, “any party can interrogate the database with the telephone number of an Enum subscriber, and the database will return a list of identities and internet-related destinations that are associated with the subscriber”. In other words, this single database will store your every contact point in one publicly accessible place.
Advertisement
There are some obvious advantages to the system: your business card will contain a single contact number, for instance, and you need never again miss a potentially important call. But before we jump ahead too quickly, some big questions need to be addressed. Who will be put in charge of such a sensitive and potentially valuable online resource? Private-sector monopolies do not have a great track record in protecting consumer rights involving the net. What will be done to ensure that our privacy rights receive the fullest possible protection? And are these individual numbers being seen by Whitehall as the next Orwellian step towards creating a universal identification number for more efficiently tracking us?
Privacy is the greatest immediate concern. The Electronic Privacy and Information Centre claims that Enum could become “a tool of marketers, spammers, and individuals who wish to harass others”, who will mine the database for contact information. “The system could,” it concludes, “facilitate an unprecedented amount of spam” — as solicitations will be sent automatically to all your communications devices.
And if that suggestion worries you, you have until November 10 to tell the DTI.