Live data from Hacker News

FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

404media.co

241–250 of 417 posts

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#241
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to depend a lot. It's kind of hard in Germany - they wanted my permanent address. I didn't find France as difficult. Iceland didn't care. Italy wanted my passport. Chile, you virtually needed to be a citizen, as I recall.

> Chile, you virtually needed to be a citizen, as I recall. I heard something similar about Russia after recent changes actually, it could as well be impossible for non-residents so tourists just stick with international roaming and public wifi. IIRC there's a catch-22 situation where you need a Gosuslugi (online government services portal) account to buy a sim, but you need a Russian phone number to sign up for one.…

Foreigners must provide their biometric data to buy a local SIM card. They better just use a tourist SIM card.

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#242
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disjoint issues really. Phone scams mostly rely on the shoddy/lack of verification of caller id info as calls transit the network where it's not verified so they are unblockable (because they just use a different fake number every time). They're actually calling from one or a pool of numbers but you can't block and report them on the receiving end because the number your phone thinks it's blocking isn't theirs. This…

Hardly disjoint. Most of the scams come from foreign networks.

They can also use VoIP. So just banning calls from abroad is not enough, you need to better regulate VoIP services.

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#243

This was the case in Belgium a couple of years ago. Everybody had to go to a store and have their ID read by the system, and if they didn't, the phone number would be shut down. Unsure how that worked for MVNOs though. Now I live in the USA and am well-familiar with the spam calls. I wonder if this new rule will reduce/prevent them. I think in general the ability to spoof numbers should be banned / controlled. Someon…

This is unrelated to spam calls. Business will register thousands of phone numbers for "surveys" and will continue spamming with AI calls.

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#244

As a Russian: huh, you guys could still just buy a sim card without any kind of identification? Impressive. We had that ID requirement introduced way back in the 00s. Even EU countries seem to require an ID now. When I traveled to France and Belgium in 2024, I bought a French tourist sim card, and the carrier kept sending me some rather insistent messages that my line would get disconnected if I don't upload my passp…

In the US it gets fought hard because Wall St uses it to dodge state income taxes. Everyone thinks it's drug dealer related for us, but it's actually Finance bros driving into NYC from out of state (NJ or CT) but trying to hide it.

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#245
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find most concerning is that this isn't a bill or law. Unelected government officials at the FCC can apparently just decide to do this .

You want to have to vote for every single decision maker in the government?

There's a whole big conversation to have about the bureaucratic state.

One of the things that appeals to voters is the argument that too many decisions are made by unaccountable bureaucrats. Trump has been as effective at fixing this as with "drain the damp," and our elected officials clearly haven't been great about writing policy either. But one of the grievances that gets people to vote is "look at all this shit that some guy in Washington just decided."

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#246
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the specific proposed rule to reference: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-seeks-comment-enhanced-know...

What I find most concerning is that this isn't a bill or law. Unelected government officials at the FCC can apparently just decide to do this .

They badly need to be checked and/or balanced.

Re: FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs

#250
post #82

No more anonymous driving, thanks to Flock. Soon, no more anonymous calls, thanks to the FCC. Your bank already knows everything about you; why not your operating system, too? Soon your ISP will only let you online if your OS sends them the "right" information: your government ID. We should also abolish cash while we're at it. The government needs to know every purchase you've ever made, no exceptions. Of course, the…

> We should also abolish cash while we're at it. Why do you think all the rich people (and by extension the oligarchy running this country) are pushing Crypto?

Monero is the best alternative to cash. And any crypto acceptance helps you pay with Monero because crypto-->crypto is 10x easier than crypto-->fiat.
Post reply on HN