The phone in your pocket rings. You pull it out, look at the screen and don’t recognize the number. Well, you don’t remember everyone’s number, right? Your hello is returned with a voice asking whether you would like to take a call from your mother. In my case I faint, as she passed on some years ago. Others would immediately say, “of course” and then you find you are connected to someone trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner.
Well, that’s a kind of nutty scenario, but the intrusion could be real if a UK “service” that starts next week is copied by commercial operators in other countries. On June 18, 2009 a company called Connectivity, with a web service address
http://www.118800.co.uk, will be offering a connection
service to mobile (cell) phones. The company says that it has a database of 15 million UK mobile phones (out of an estimated total of 40 – 45 million) that they acquired from “legitimate” lists where people offered their mobile numbers in the normal course of business or survey, and no doubt neglected to check the “do not share” box.
If you do not know the mobile phone number of someone, you will be able to call Connectivity and provide them with a name and general address of the person you want to talk to. If the automated voice recognition system finds a match then the service calls that number and asks whether a connection can be made. At no time is the called number given to the caller. If a call fails because of service problems then the caller can leave a voice mail or send a text message.
The service will charge about $1.20 to the caller, who will also have to pay for any landline, or his own mobile connection, charges; and the called party will have to pay for their mobile charges as well, including any roaming charges.
You will be able to opt out of the service (go
unlisted in US parlance,
ex-directory in UK parlance) but it will be an active opt out, could take up to a month, and cost you the connection charges to do so.
The company has reported that they are deliberately excluding phone numbers that are verifiably registered to those under 18 years of age. What a useless screening criterion! How many under 18s do you know that have a mobile registered in their name? On an open credit account that would be equal to none… On a prepaid card basis it will probably be less than 10%, with the other 90% in parents’ names.
What’s wrong with that? Mobiles, cell phones, have become the tool of the school bully these days. They are used to foment hate, self-loathing, fear, by those who would otherwise hide their cowardly natures. There are also those who would, and do, prey on children – literally being proffered with this service a contact tool to aid in their grooming for their lousy, disgusting, perverted desires and activities.
I hope that this company fails, and fast. I hope that it is not copied in other countries. I hope that it does not create the notion that privacy is not your right, only your desire.
Fortunately for me and my family, there is little danger that our cell phone numbers will be disclosed to an operation like this. The phones are switched on rarely – many readers know my feelings about unwanted RF exposure – and the numbers have certainly not been published anywhere. When my phone was turned on earlier this week in expectation of a call from my daughter, I got a wrong number call which I had to find a parking place to take (yes, I take seriously talking while driving, and I did not even respond to the caller, just terminating the connection straightaway) and, in fact, this week was the first time, ever, that anybody outside my family actually heard my phone ring!
I am not my phone provider’s best customer, I don’t need the greatest and latest hardware – whatever my daughter would wish for us (her) in terms of bells and whistles – but I value the security the system offers my family. And we have central vacuuming in the house so I am not in the market for a vacuum cleaner…
