From: leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Caller ID
Reply-To: 70465.203@compuserve.com
Organization: SCN Research/Qic Laboratories of Tigard, Oregon.
Distribution: pnw
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 07:51:37 GMT

nealf@mdd.comm.mot.com (Neal Friedman) writes:

>Caller ID is a lousy idea, that will only be used to make $$$ for the phone
>company, and allow business to gather more information on me than I want.
>It provides no gain or advantage to me, the individual consumer.  In the two
>cases where I have personally received threatening phone calls, I had no
>real desire to deal with the calling individual anyway: I'd rather let the
>police or phone company do that.  And there is a *MUCH BETTER* way to deal
>with such situations (see below).

As noted in a seperate post, the businesses get your number *already* if
they are at asll large.

>Besides, it is easy to defeat (by calling from a pay phone), and provides only
>the number of the phone, NOT the name & address of the calling party.  Also,
>unlisted numbers, or numbers of individuals who have asked to have their
>number blocked from caller ID won't show up.  Wanna bet the crooks and 
>harrassing salespeople don't block their phone numbers?  If a crook wants to
>rob your house, calling from a payphone defeats Caller-ID.

One of the standard features allos you to set your phone to reject calls
for numbers with blocked IDs.

>A much better option is available - phone number tracing.  In this case,
>if you receive a harrasing call, or some other call that you want to know
>the origin of,  immediately hangup and punch a special code on your phone,
>like 0*7 (or whatever, I forget what the original proposal used).  The phone
>switch marks the call you just received.  Hangup.  Then you call the operator
>and ask for the most recent call to be traced.  The phone company, not you,
>will follow up, prosecuting the crime, or contacting the offending caller or
>whatever.  The phone number itself is NOT compromized, and you don't have
>to deal with said nasty individual.  A variation prints a report on your
>next monthly bill (but not the actual phone number).

Guess what? Call Trace is part of the *same* package of features as
Caller-ID. And *requires* the same hardware and software. If it is in
place, it costs *nothing* extra to supply Caller-ID to customers. Except 
the cost of whatever the customer uses to display the incoming number.

>Anyone who is not a "nasty individual" will presumably identify themselves
>and willingly provide their phone number to you, if you don't already know it.  
>A small fee per trace might be reasonable to allow the phone company to
>recover their expenses, and keep the service from being abused. 

The "small fee" in most areas seems to be on the order of *two dollars*
per trace!

And the two main reasons *I* want Caller-ID are:
1. because I have a *lot* of friends who *won't* talk to an answering
   machine, With Caller-ID, I'd know if the "blank" message was from
   them or a "random call". I know it wouldn't be 100%, but it'd help.
2. I run a BBS and we have had times when it was obvious that *someone*
   just wasn't getting thru. But since they didn't get thru, we didn't 
   know who it was. And being part of Fido net, the call could have been
   from a rather large group of systems...

In neiother of these cases is your scenario correct. The folks *aren't*
"nasty individuals", but we can't coimmunicate with them either. 

There are also things like what happens to the poor soul who takes down
a BBS. I can testify to the fact that you will get calls from folks with
*old* BBS lists for as long as *two YEARS* afterwards. Possibly longer,
but I only lived there for two years after that system went down.

Or the part-time system. The system is up only at certain hours, but 
people arte ignoring them. *IF* you put the system up quick enough, you
might get them to log in... Caller-ID would help there, too.

Oh yes, another feature in the package: Call Return. You punch in the
code and your phone dials the number (which you are not given) of the
last phone to call *you*. This is great for the times when you get
home and the phone quits ringing just before you can pick it up.

Call return is also useful with some harassing type calls.

And you might want to check into what has happened in the states that
*already* have Caller-ID (for several *years* in some cases). Harassing
calls drop by *at least* 50%. Sure, you can use a phone booth, but that
costs money and is *inconvenient*! Most harassers call from home or
work. 

>This is too cumbersome for businesses to track customers with, but allows
>for the odd harrassing or illegal call to be dealt with.  Women's shelters
>and unlisted numbers are also safe, since the phone number itself is not
>given out.  This service can not be "blocked" by criminals.  And since it
>costs the phone company money to deal with many complaints from the same
>offender, they (Baby Bell) will want to nab the offender.  Better a big
>phone company goes after some telemarketer than 1000 little customers.

>The only limitation is you can't pre-screen your incoming calls, but that
>is what you have an answering machine for anyway, and *I* don't find this
>to be a useful feature.  I know how to hangup, just as easily as I can
>close my front door in someone's face (not that I've ever done either).

>Flames to me via Email.  Rational comments to the net.
-- 
Leonard Erickson		      leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com
CIS: [70465,203]			 70465.203@compuserve.com
FIDO:   1:105/51	 Leonard.Erickson@f51.n105.z1.fidonet.org
(The CIS & Fido addresses are preferred)
Xref: sparky seattle.general:2884 pnw.general:2010