Caller ID May Be Profitable Privacy Killer
At first, the flap over Caller ID, which reveals a caller’s number to the party telephoned, seems just a disagreement about the value of a minor new phone device. But it may be the opening salvo in a battle over the nature of today’s phone companies.
Because the service guards the privacy of the person called while destroying the caller’s privacy, Caller ID will immediately affect even those who don’t subscribe. It may also cost them several billion dollars a year to regain their privacy. Furthermore, if the service sells at all, the utilities’ practice of just throwing out a product and making everyone adjust to its effects may become a preview of coming attractions.
Caller ID defenders note that big businesses have for some years been “capturing” the numbers of people who call their 800 and 900 lines, matching them with other personal data for telemarketing lists. They also say Caller ID is just the latest of many ways that phones can be used like little computers: They now forward calls, store numbers, access bank accounts.
But with Caller ID, the subscriber isn’t limited to his own private number, his own coded information. He gets the private number of another person, listed or not, without that person’s knowledge or permission. “They used to fire people for giving out confidential numbers,” says MIT sociologist Gary Marx. “What led to this reversal? They’re trying to make a commodity out of the phone number, saying you don’t own your own number, they do.”
If so, they’re riding into the information age on a product that’s gimmicky and redundant, and promoted in an unusually tacky way. It’s a fear campaign, as several Bell Atlantic companies, the first to sell Caller ID widely, position it as a cure for “unwanted, abusive or threatening calls.”
As cures go, it’s not well thought out: What should subscribers DO with the displayed number? “Many (subscribers) tell us they call these people back and tell them they have their number,” says New Jersey Bell spokesman James W. Carrigan. But phone companies have advised generations to do the opposite, to “just hang up and report the call,” says ACLU attorney Janlori Goldman in Washington. “It is irresponsible for a phone company to use Caller ID technology to wash its hands of the serious problem of harassing phone calls.”
If obscene calls are really the target, there are several products that do a better, safer job of screening, blocking or refusing calls than Caller ID, which only displays an unidentified number. There are answering machines. There’s the “trap-and-trace” service that phone companies provide free to subscribers who are being bothered. There’s Call Block (typically $4 a month), which cuts off any further calls from the same number, and Call Trace ($1 per use), which automatically records that number in a phone company database that’s available to both phone and police authorities.
Caller ID (typically $6.50 a month and $60 to $80 for a unit that displays the numbers) may not even be a good cure. New Jersey Bell credits Caller ID with reducing the occurrence there of obscene and harassing calls in the past two years, but the reduction cited is actually a 49% decrease in trap-and-trace and Call Trace usage. The cause may simply be that Caller ID took up some of the load, but New Jersey Bell “assumes a reduction in the number of calls made,” says Carrigan.
The service may yet prove unpopular. Even with bill inserts, TV and print ads, direct mail and telemarketing, only 2% of New Jersey Bell’s subscribers took it (23% have Call Forwarding). They may not even understand what they bought: Half have unpublished numbers, in other words, a desire to keep their own number private.
In general, the public view of Caller ID isn’t favorable. A recent Harris poll sponsored by Equifax (the big credit reporting bureau) found that 55% of respondents thought Caller ID should be allowed. Forty-three percent said no. But when reminded that it reveals unlisted numbers and numbers of people calling help or hot lines, 55% said it should be regulated, and 25% said it should be banned completely.
Most often recommended is some form of blocking, so people could keep their numbers from being displayed. This raises interesting questions: If enough people order both Caller ID and blocking, would the service have anything to sell? Wouldn’t phone companies have to disclose what percent of lines are blocked?
So far, most suggested blocking options are fairly wimpy (by contrast, a Pennsylvania judge barred the sale of Caller ID as illegal and unconstitutional). California will permit Caller ID (probably in 1991) only if it’s paired with “per-call” blocking--a burdensome exercise requiring callers to dial a code to activate blocking before each call. Even with “per-line” blocking, consumers would have to request that their line be blocked--a required action that many will overlook.
The phone companies favor much more costly solutions. People who want privacy are encouraged to make operator-assisted, credit card or pay phone calls, all more expensive. Alternatively (and incredibly), both Bell and GTE are pushing the purchase of second lines just for outgoing calls, with unlisted, never-answered numbers, or second numbers on the same phone.
The cost of all those assisted, blocked, traced, and deflected calls could be several billion dollars a year, says Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. “The phone companies,” he says, “ are going to make 5 to 10 times as much money selling people back their privacy.”
The proverbial level playing field is needed here: People who don’t want the new service shouldn’t be injured by it. And under the old principle that an injured party must be made whole again, the blocking that undoes the effects of Caller ID should be both free and automatic. Those wanting their numbers displayed can ask to be unblocked.
