SiliconBeat wrote about Jangl yesterday. Jangl is a new service aimed at giving users privacy from stalkers (whether over-eager salespeople, or bad dates) by giving you a temporary and disposable phone number. Similar to AIM Phoneline, except that it allows you to receive calls on ordinary telephones, and it has a cost associated with it, both are aiming to give users a familiar, albeit low tech, way of dealing with the intrusiveness of today’s phones.
The need is real, but I think the approach (temporary new identities) is a bandage fix. How long until you’ve got so many temporary identities that you can’t reasonably manage them anymore? Moreover, new identities won’t deal with the nuisance callers using autodialers, or the callers who already have you in their database because of a “prior relationship”. What’s required are more robust tools for managing the identity you have. Persona management, and sophisticated filtering tools are the answer — not more phone numbers.
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