Editorial Proof of ID to buy a UK Mobile Phone

[windows]

Originally Posted by waveydavey

We had a security presentation on our MVP open day about personal security and to it is amazing what you can do. One thing is for sure, I'll never use my place of birth or mothers maiden name as a security question for anything again!

As a matter of interest why mate?

[firstbuddha]

it's too easy to find this information out.
I can look at your Facebook family to see what their surname is - like your cousins perhaps, to get mothers maiden name.
And places like FriendsReunited usually reveal where you went to school, so that would be a good guess for where you were born.

I like confusing the questions - so when it asks place of birth, put your pet's name, etc.

Only you know which way round you put the answers

[The Mailman]

Originally Posted by firstbuddha

I like confusing the questions - so when it asks place of birth, put your pet's name, etc.

Only you know which way round you put the answers

Arrghh! Now I am going to have to change all my passwords - I thought I was the only one whio did that.

TBH I think we are too far down the line to start objecting too much about what people hold about us. What the issue should really be is "Who has the access to that data?".

That also includes how secure it is as who has access also includes those people who illegally or accidentally access it as well as the jumped up jobs worth from the town hall who doesn't like the way you park your car.

This goverment has so far shown an incredible lack of care over the protection of data security and if in the private sector they would have been liable to some major negligence claims. You hear that they have canned that contract with the agency who lost teh data but you know thats just one contract out of ...

I think the Government should tighten up and introduce rigid and secure guidelines and protection systems along with a defined set of access authorities before going anywhere near increasing the body of data they already hold.

[Bewlay Brother]

...I used to work for a BT mobile comms service centre for few years back in 1989 - at that time the proof of ID process was VERY involved - I remember even having to insist to a chairman of a certain Port Authority that he had to provide me with a copy of his daughter's marriage certificate (in ADDITION to the other proof of ID's he had already supplied) before we could supply him with a basic cellphone for his daughter (Christmas gift) - he was getting rather frustrated to put it mildly. BT were obviously very concerned about non-payment of bills - even with direct debit mandates etc.
Despite all that red tape I was actually disgusted to see the mobile network operators move to offer PAYG services which took away any degree of traceability to the cellphone account holder (after all people, ever since the landline telephone was invented - we were always accountable/traceable against that number... there was with that a certain amount of responsibility attached to the ownership of a telephone)... the REAL motive I believe for the PAYG introduction was to open up the cellphone market to....... children! What an irresponsible thing that has proven to be. Not only do our already over indulged children enjoy further "empowerment" by providing them with a personal mobile telephone (chipping further away at what little sense of control and protection parents have over their dear little offspring) but in the whole process the networks have devalued the service as a whole to monthly account holding customers (you HAVE tried speaking to customer service recently have you not?). The other BIG issue (especially as I now find myself working within an emergency control room) is that children seem to be behind a huge increase in hoax 999 calls and 999 calls for trivial matters (e.g. "so-and-so looked at me in a funny way in the school playground" type calls) which impact on resources available for genuine callers... without traceable cellphone accounts many of these calls involve several agencies trying to locate the owner - all a huge public expense and a complete waste of time.
I say - passport proofs of ID? - bring it on! Copies of 3 utility bills, full bank details, driving licence and birth certificate? - yes - bring them on too! In addition to this I would insist all users be over 18 years of age for a kick off. Kids should be totally and utterly banned from coming in contact with cellphones - the whole idea was evil from the beginning....

[tonybro]

Interesting insight, Bewlay!

I too worked in the industry as cellular telephones came out in 1988. As I was customer-facing, most people could bring the requisite items with them mainly because the items themselves and the cost of calls were so expensive - it was primarily a credit checking function rather than traceability.

I too feel PAYG was primarily aimed at children and pester power. I have relented now my youngest is at secondary school but I still grab his phone and check what's on it but I am also lucky in that it doesn't appear central to his life and he can go for days without using it!

The mobile has become the tool for recording ant-social behaviour with little chance of traceability with all the ills that brings.

[windows]

Plus one has to wonder what all that radiation is doing to their tiny developing brains......

[waveydavey]

I think they're going about it the wrong way anyway. Surely it would be much better to need proof of ID to buy a SIM card wouldn't it? Then all the issues with imported devices etc would be gone. That way at least the terrorists would have to be rich to use their mobiles......

[Bewlay Brother]

My beef with the cellphone market having been opened up to the non-direct debit paying youth market is with the fact that the "customer support" departments for all service providers are geared primarily to to needs of the "youth" (i.e. their majority customer) - the most complex issues dealt with on regular basis are usually SMS related. In the "old" days there were personnel available quickly on the phone to help "grown-up" users deal with aspects such as mobile data, mobile fax, modem issues etc and I find that nowadays if I have an issue in these areas the customer service people I get on the phone usually do not know what the hell I am talking about... (god forbid you mention the phrases transparent data/non-transparent data etc)... after being shuttled from one department to another I might end up with someone "in the know".
----------------------
On a sideline... has digital cellular brought better quality calls and security?...
Back in the early 1990's the problem with ANALOGUE mobiles was the discovery they could be cloned by criminals/fraudsters usually, I have to say, within the IT-savvy Asian sectors of the UK cellular retail/distribution chain - so much so that British Telecom actually began barring all cellphones from ringing the Indian sub-continent (cloned phones were turning up in Asian-run shops/cafes/street corners for the purpose of "free" phone calls back "home").
Digital brought with it (we are led to believe) much more security - but don't bank on it for much longer. The spin-off unfortunately has been poorer speech quality... yes, I said poorer speech quality. Digital, despite all the initial hype of "cd quality calls" (yes, Cellnet as it was then really did say that) has proved to be the opposite. Why? - well digital is all about transmitting DATA and data can handle being encoded and re-assembled at the other end of the call path without "loss of quality" as small delays in the system will not affect the reassembly at the other end - if some does not get through the receiving device simply requests the lost chunck of data be re-sent - all the 1's and 0's will get through - eventually. The small delays will not affect the final result. VOICE calls cannot deal with any delays at all - the process of encoding then transmitting in small segments and reassembly is not an instantaneous/lossless process - the nuances of the human voice require instantaneous processing. Analogue dealt with speech perfectly - in good signal areas you could hear a pin drop in the background of some speech calls and the sound you heard was "true" human speech - not the compressed, fluffy-edged speech you get on a digital phone. The other "motive" for digital was to enable a massive increase in the capacity of the network - digital allows for many more "channels" to operate side-by-side - but there is a drawback... in order to accommodate all these extra customers, (yes, its the kids again...) they not only had to increase the channel spectrum (easy - it's digital) but at the same time they had to reduce the voice sampling rate (meaning call quality is further undermined)... yes, like digital TV, the network providers have created a mechanism they can adjust and tweak in favour of generating more revenue - at the cost of quality to the end user. Will voice calls disappear altogether in the long run? Digital, after all, is best suited to one machine talking to another machine... is this the run-up to humans devolving into a non-speaking society who prefer to email/message one another? - don't laugh - have you not already noticed our society's crumbling skills at speaking to one another or holding sensible conversation?

[neilm]

We could be opening up a whole new can of worms with the analogue/digital debate!

Remember how CD's were marketed as being the perfect sound, but those of us with high end analogue equipment could hear the limitations clearly (and if 'perfect' then, why the need for SACD etc? )

TV is similar- we keep hearing 'digital quality' bandied about, but to my mind this actually means over compressed, low bandwidth rubbish. Watch some of the mass market freeview channels and you yearn for a decent analogue feed again!

So, as you say, digital transmission often is just an excuse for the telcos/TV companiies/record companies to squeeze ever more content at the expense of quality.

[tonybro]

I was at a video demonstration in W. London recently and it was mentioned analogue TV channels take about 270Mb/s (equivalent) and a comparative channel on Sky HD about 12Mb/s! That's why digital can seem so much poorer than analogue. It's also why they want to turn it off so they can cram other channels in the space left....

On the digital networks debate, I am sure we are going to have to get to a QoS system to make sure voice is prioritised. There may be something in use now but I am not so sure....

As most of you know Voice over IP (VoIP) has been around for years but it's only recently (last 3-4 years) that it has started to become the accepted installation for Corporates and the Public Sector. It always has Class of Service (CoS) and Quality of Service (QoS) enabled to achieve the smooth delivery of voice (and video) packets. I still almost have arguments with customers insisting that QoS is always active when in reality QoS is only an issue when bandwidth resources start getting scarce and the prioritisation takes precedence....