On April 30th, the FCC voted that they wanted to demand KYC in order to use a phone number inside the United States. This may not end up happening, but better safe than sorry, and I’m trying to figure out ways around this problem in case they are needed.
The stated goal is to prevent spam and robo calls, and if a provider allows a robo call, it’s something like a $2,500 fine per call, which means that services like Google Voice and text now and every cell phone and phone provider is going to require government ID. The provider has to keep your ID on record the entire time you have the service and then if you cancel the service they are required to keep your ID for four years after the date of cancellation. This will be a boone for hackers.
What i need help with:
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Secondary Internet connection: It doesn’t happen often, but I use my phone as a secondary internet connection if, for example, my home ISP is ever out. I am not sure yet if data only sims will be a problem since they can’t make or receive telephone calls and make and receive text messages. So this may or may not be an issue. I guess if nothing else I could go to the local McDonald’s or something like that and use their Wi-Fi if my ISP was ever out in order to contact the customer service of my ISP online to let them know about it.
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Access to banking: Banks are so stupid in general, but every time I log in to my online account, it has to send me a phone call or a text message in order to verify that I am who I say I am, regardless of the fact that we all know that the telephone system is complete garbage for this use case, but they’re banks, so what else can you expect, right?
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Access to ride sharing services: I lost access to Lyft several years ago, because they no longer allowed you to book rides from their website, and I refused to install the app, and even if I wanted to install the app, it requires Google spy services, which I will not install on my device. That left me with only the option of Uber, which is fine, except that they also require a phone number, and if you don’t have one, then you can’t receive your text message verification codes again, and stuff like that to log in.
Without a telephone number, you can’t call a taxi either. At least not that I’m aware of, because the old way of doing taxis before Uber came out was through the telephone system, and I’m not aware if taxis have evolved since then.
Join the rest of us, lol. KYC-less phone numbers haven’t been legal in decades in Australia
Joking aside, about the only alternative I can think of is data-only SIM cards. They let you use the mobile phone network and apps etc., you just don’t have a number accessible to you. But iirc these use foreign numbers and can make you stand out more. But it might be worth considering for certain use cases
Same for Germany, and I think even the whole EU.
Since data only sims allow you to access the data network without having a phone number, can you guys get them without doing the KYC process?
I mean, the answer to stopping spam calls seems obvious to me. Allow the user to choose whether they receive incoming calls from anybody or contacts only, in which case the only people they would be able to receive calls from would be those who they’ve specifically allowed. So the network would still carry the call but the call would come to your phone and if you weren’t in the allow list and it was set to allow list only your phone wouldn’t even ring it would just immediately hang it up or send it to voicemail. My experience so far is that spammers don’t leave voice messages.
I feel as though the government is just trying to implement this to have further surveillance, in which case, they would probably want data-only sims to also have the ID attached to them. But if it’s truly to stop just robo calls, then they might stop at only doing it if you have access to a phone number. Of course, it’s totally unnecessary, since you could just do the allow list, as mentioned above, and stop spam calls right there. But hey, government wants more information, and they’ll come up with any pretext to get it.
I haven’t actually looked into local options much. It might only be overseas companies, in which case you’d still have an overseas number which would stand out if the goal is to remain anonymous. But I might look into it some more.
True, but this wouldn’t work for everyone. A freelancer who gets called out to jobs would need to have their phone open to all calls, for example. And a screening step or straight-to-voicemail might annoy potential clients.
This is the one and only reason. Things like “it’ll stop spam” are just arguments given to make the idea sound more palatable to the general public