phone lookups (was: BBC News Online: 'Snoop' plans put on hold)

[Ken Brown]

Richard D G Cox wrote:


> > IME landlines still mostly stay with the property
> 
> This is primarily because BT normally charges customers for insisting on
> such a number being changed.  However during the recent number shortages
> in London etc, the rules about reuse of numbers were "relaxed" and there
> is little, if any, vigilance within the Telcos about the possible impact
> of reusing "popular" numbers as soon (in some cases) as three to six months
> after they were previously active for a different customer - regardless of
> whether it is at the same, or a different, address.

A few years ago I moved and found myself briefly with the phone number
of a neighbour who, and at another time that of my ex-wife and her new
husband. I was able to make calls and someone else was getting billed,
messages from them were left on my phone. Mainly due to the incompetence
of Cable and Wireless rubbing up against the immovable bureaucracy of
BT.   Too boring and off-topic to go into here but I wrote it all down
at http://www.cix.co.uk/~kbrown/rotm/cwitless.htm - a page I find
embarrassing nowadays because it makes me look far too much like the
kind of looney who writes long letters to the papers in green ink about
how the government should change the date of Easter.
 
> The potential impact of this on privacy should be immediately obvious.
> Two of my numbers here are still shown in the phone book against the name
> of a previous user; BT normally refuses to disclose how recently a number
> was in previous use, or for what (broad category of) purpose - fax line,
> pizza shop etc - when allocating a number to a new connection or service.
> 
> --
> Richard Cox