Hacker News Reader

I cannot up-vote this more.

Many people don't realise that they don't own their phone number! It is possible to own a phone number but it is not widely available just like domains are. Hence it is a stupid idea to use it as an identity.

View on HN

I recently learned this the hard way. I changed my phone number after moving cities, and AT&T just leased my old number to someone else!

There is a finite supply of numbers. Not recycling old numbers and just throwing them in a hole forever wouldn't be very prudent.

There is an infinite supply of numbers. You can just add extra digits. Mobile phone numbers used to be 8 digits in NZ, then became 9 digits when they needed more numbers.

Numbers aren't limited to the amount you can count, there will always be more.

What did you expect was going to happen?

I'd expect it to be reused _eventually_; not right away though.

With a self-sovereign identity, you are in control. Our IETF draft + running code: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pouwelse-trustchain-01#sec... Our goverment even sponsors this work. Decentral, no need for Russian servers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com