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Comment by isubkhankulov | Hacker News Reader

ironically, both websites serve predominantly scammers who need SMS to verify with various websites to commit fraud.

I can see how scammers would abuse such a service but u should not be so quick to assume that that is his major customer base. There have been numerous occasions where I was required to do SMS verification for legit accounts, and I didn't want to expose my phone number.

This happens often enough for you to need a programmatic solution?

Is there any other type of solution?

If some service demands my mobile number, that is a clear signal that I should not give them my actual mobile number.

Not everyone wants to provide six forms of identification and the finger prints of their first born to register for a website.

yes, but using bitcoin provides a layer of anonymity only fraudsters need. legit users who would just use twilio or another service that is tied to their identity.

Papers please. If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear.

Considering they mostly offer known VOIP numbers from twilio and likes and smsprivacy.org charges an UTTERLY INSANE $50 per day for physical numbers https://smsprivacy.org/buy-number/physical/GB I can't imagine them being too popular.

Sites like https://smspva.com offer you real physical numbers associated with real physical sim cards for a couple of cents.

Russian and Ukraninan numbers from smspva.com would not be used for fraud. in fact, that would be a huge red flag.

Depends on the type of fraud. SMSPVA is mostly used to create email, social media accounts which are then used for various schemes.

Scammers don't need to use services like this to commit fraud. They'll just buy their own burner phones.

Unless they're in another country, or need to automate the process, or need multiple numbers, etc.

these scammers are usually located in 3rd world countries and they're pretending to be US/EU users.

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