this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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It's really the phone companies' fault for stagnating instead of innovating.
There is no reason at this point for most people to have phone numbers at all. We have the technology today to throw the whole concept out the window.
Replace it with something where a stranger couldn't guess how to contact a random person. Replace it with something where third parties can't easily share your contact info.
You could even have both technologies at the same time to help transition. And we do, as users, but we still need phone numbers because our carriers don't give us multiple options directly.
Phone numbers are based on requirements for a system that's almost 150 years old now. Back when the numbers really meant locations and before people realized how easy it could be exploited to steal old people's retirement money.
You still have to have some kind of unique identifier. What do you propose phone numbers are replaced with because I can't think of anything that isn't basically just the same but with a different flavour or actually is actively worse.
Sure you can have a unique identifier. That’s not the issue. The issue is that anyone can contact you via your phone number! This is not a problem with chat apps where people need permission to add you to their contact list. Why not have a system like that?
Same goes for credit cards. They should need to ask for permission to charge your credit card. Merely knowing your credit card info should not be enough.
For CCs 3DS does exactly this, though not implemented everywhere.