Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdwallis | Hacker News Reader

It would be great if everyone just put their phone number as the SSID.

Phone numbers are unique and let others contact you if they want to use your wifi for some reason. Would probably help neighbors get hold of each other in emergencies as well.

View on HN

But then any random passerby could harvest phone numbers easily. And because of the nature of a) cell phones and b) wireless networks, there isn't really a good correlation from wifi-availability to geographic location to actual phone location. You might know all of your neighbours' phone numbers, but not which goes with whom, nor which ones are on your floor, or even in your building. And just imagine someone phoning them all to try to find out who's playing music at night.

Well yes, if you publish your phone number then people will be able to see it.

You're right about the flat number / street number situation though. It might be good to add that to the SSID as well.

Loud music seems like a perfect use case for the information.

When I lived in an apartment building our SSID was "internet-304". 304 being my apartment number.

No one ever showed up at my door or anything, but it was there. Seems like the most obvious and succinct way to tie the access point to a physical location, which seems the most obvious way to open communications.

Yes, I've had my phone number as SSID for the past three years and have yet to have anyone call it.

I think it'll need to hit a critical mass before it's useful. People don't expect SSID's to have useful information so they don't look for it there.

Great idea. My in-laws have it backwards: the password is the street number... Changing it would break all devices that already store the password, so it stays.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com