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Comment by lsllc | Hacker News Reader

I've never been an FB "person", but maybe 6-7 years ago the local running club moved to scheduling everything on FB. For a while, the page was "public", but then you had to have an account (which required a phone number) to see anything other than the club's "landing page". So I ended up making an FB account which I've only ever used to be able to see the club pages (I haven't ever posted anything!) -- dumb of me I know, but FB had almost become a requirement to participate in life.

However recently, I've noticed that I now get a couple of junk text every day or two whereas up until a few weeks ago, I don't think I'd ever had a single junk text.

I wonder if this is why.

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The cost of sending texts has gone to effectively zero, so there's no barrier to someone sending one to all the numbers in sequence. At least, until the phone company catches on and blocks you.

The one I got late last night was pretending to be from the US Postal Service, prompting me to click on an anonymous link in order to "rescedule delivery"

Going to get worse SCOTUS just ruled saying a very strict reading definition on robocall to be only random or sequential numbers. So if you already have a list say bought from a 3rd party company of all the phones in the US sounds like you can bulk send now no repercussions.

In my field - politics - campaigns use tools like Hustle which are basically mechanical turk clickers to get around these rules. I'm thinking personally this will change...

Have you actually read the whole SCOTUS decision? Because that's not at all what it said.

I haven’t seen a clear analysis of the decision’s impact. I’ve read it, it’s quite brief. As I understand it, this decision essentially guts the blanket prohibition on spam text messages to cell phones. The rest of the law refers to restrictions on calls to “residential” phone lines, which does not include cell phones, so it’s not clear that there are any other limitations on texts to cell phones - do you see it differently?

This brings up the side issue that the act doesn’t ever mention text messages at all ... everyone has interpreted them to be covered as if they were phone calls, but that’s never been tested at the Supreme Court level.

The decision was unanimous and is really the only possible conclusion from a plain reading of the law. The court didn’t “gut” anything, it’s just a bad law. It’s up to Congress to enact a law that says what they actually want the law to do.

That's because Congress has abdicated its role and we live in a appartjik state where the executive appoints the judicial body and the judicial body legislates from the bench while the admin creates executive actions or has agencies create rules that have the weight of laws.

The system will continue to not work when Congress does not do it's job.

It gutted it, in the sense that we've been operating under an interpretation of the law for the past 20 years and this ruling changes that interpretation dramatically. The law wasn't so much badly written, as technology has completely changed in the time since then.

As an example, if this law were written today, I'm not sure that cell phones would get special status. They were put in the same category as medical emergency lines, because "radiotelephones" were very rare and expensive to operate, whereas today every 12 year old has one.

No, the law was badly written, at least if the goal is to limit all robocalling and not just robocalling using sequential or randomized numbers.

The law essentially says "it is illegal to call someone using an autodialer, where an autodialer is a device that makes calls to phone numbers using a sequential or randomized algorithm." It's pretty clear then that automatically dialing from a prepared list of actual phone numbers is not against this law. If they wanted it to cover the latter case, they could have easily included that in the law, even 20+ years ago.

I read scotusblog and an excerpt i think kagan in axios? what am I misunderstanding?

Can Congress use their franking privilege to send texts?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franking#Franking_privilege

That particular privilege only exists for the postal service, not the 'ma bell' telecommunications network.

edit: but now I'm curious if franking privileges were ever extended to telegrams.

That's interesting. SMS wholesale prices in my part of the world (Western Europe) are still at around $0.07. This seems to indicate some kind of market failure. But whatever it is, it's fine by me, as I can still count the number of spam/scam text message I ever received on one hand.

So how can we cause the email market to fail in a similar way? ;-)

> That's interesting. SMS wholesale prices in my part of the world (Western Europe) are still at around $0.07.

Isn't it rather they was it is supposed to be? - "Everybody" uses messengers for communication. SMS has lost that battle. Whoever uses SMS does so due to a need.

That's interesting. Where I live I have unlimited text messages and minutes for €5/month. So whenever I want to text someone, I just use SMS - I don't have to think if they use Whatsapp, Messenger or something else. (Apple hijacks them but is doing so more or less transparently, so I don't mind.)

Is that true tho? Me and my friends use SMS a lot. But maybe other people don't?

I don't remember when I last sent an SMS. 99% of my SMS messages are various notifications, reminders, and 2fa codes. The remaining 1% is spam.

In the US, pretty much everyone I know uses SMS/iMessage (in addition to the use of SMS for verification, appointment reminders, etc.) The main exception is Google Chat at work because we use GSuite. Sometimes Twitter DM if I don't have someone's email handy. But I have a total of 1 friend in Europe who I use Facebook Messenger with.

I've known about this for awhile now but having only lived in countries where absolutely everyone uses a messaging app (particular app differing per country) it still baffles me every single time I hear about it.

How do you handle group chats? Especially with more than a couple of people? Is sending pictures and videos included with your plans too? If not how do you handle those? How about video calling? Sending a file e.g. an Excel file?

Let alone features like easily creating a vote/poll, a calendar event, a banner notification..

I get that most of these features may not be useful to everyone but surely they are to groups of teens and college students, demographics that have shown to often drive growth in communication apps.

We'll sometimes do SMS group chats with a small number of people. For videos, other files, scheduling video calls, etc. we mostly just use email. For video calling, we use Zoom, Google Meet, etc. I'm not sure I've ever seen someone doing a poll outside of Twitter.

For one-on-one messaging, SMS is still very alive.

No, many of my peers (30somethings in midwestern US) default to SMS. The only platforms you can guarantee everyone in a group can be expected to have are email, SMS, or phone calls, so for informal social stuff we end up in a text message thread.

Probably 80% have Facebook, 50% iMessage, 30% Discord 20% Twitter/Signal/Telegram/Whatsapp (pre-FB).

What messenger app can you depend on everyone having if not one of those three federated platforms?

You can explain to your friends that group text messages are horrible, and there are far better ways of having daily conversations with separate threads.

Nearly all of my 40 something friends from the Midwest have both telegram and discord, however telegram is primarily used as its just better on mobile. We have groups for all kinds of topics, cars, garden, tv, movies, sports, politics (ewww), etc. If you aren't interested in lawncare simply leave or mute the group in remain in touch via other mutual groups. The only guy not in the group is someone who still prefers phone calls.

I've yet to not be able to convince someone that separate threads/groups is way better than a bulk text group.

I’m not sure spammers pay wholesale rates. Pretty sure they purchase the cheapest SIM cards with unlimited texts and put them in gsm modems which spam out texts.

In Australia a SIM card can be purchased retail, with unlimited texts for $5.

At 750~ texts sent you’ve already beat that wholesale rate. That’s approximately one an hour, over the month. I’d be surprised if they couldn’t pump much larger volumes.

Wouldn't they block you or something if you send hundreds of thousands of texts to random numbers? It can't be that there isn't some kind of a monitoring system on the consumer SIM cards.

How many obvious spam text messages have you received? And how many have you reported to your telco provider....

You’re putting a lot of faith in telcos to care enough to put systems in place.

And spammers will burn through sims. They are looking for the most lax network for sending. Presumably the receiving network can block texts arriving, but wouldn’t actually stop a number on a competing network from being able to send messages (but would likely flag it to them).

And then there’s the time delay to be exploited. If it takes 3 days for a number to get blocked, can you send enough messages in that period to make it worthwhile?

> How many obvious spam text messages have you received?

Barely any, tho I get tons of "SSN been hacked" and "Lower your car insurance" scams, sometimes more than once a day.

I think the opposite is true: still quite high costs are the cause of SMS spam. If the carriers did not profit from this, they would have destroyed SMS spam as a phenomenon on the same day.

AT&T, Verizon, US Cellular and T-Mobile have all imposed fees on Application to Person SMSes, so they definitely are making more money off this: https://www.plivo.com/blog/a2p-10dlc/

For whatever reason, I find it creepy to read about other people having received the same spam that I did.

> However recently, I've noticed that I now get a couple of junk text every day or two whereas up until a few weeks ago, I don't think I'd ever had a single junk text.

I think this is a symptom of living in the US. Been receiving robocalls and text messages all the time since I moved here.

You also have to consider that someone somewhere probably had your phone number before you did. There's no telling what the previous person did with that number.

> I think this is a symptom of living in the US. Been receiving robocalls and text messages all the time since I moved here.

Consider signing up for the Do Not Call registry. Does not do much against the scammers but you will receive significantly fewer telemarketing calls.

https://www.donotcall.gov/

I get an infinite amount of spam texts and I don't have a Facebook account. (I did have one in college when it first came out, but I don't think I gave them my phone number, and if I did, that phone number is no longer in use. I switch phone numbers every time I switch cell providers.)

Facebook still may have your phone number if a business uploaded your phone number for targeting.

I'm sure they have plenty of information on me. I doubt that it is the primary source of spam texts, that's all I'm saying.

Many of my spam texts seem to know what state I'm in despite my area code being assigned to a different state, so I'm guessing they get them from voter records, political donations, that sort of thing.

Using WhatsApp?

Nope. It's not really a thing in the US.

Why are so many HN users against Facebook, and quick to reassure others that they only signed up out of necessity? FB & Instagram present a perfectly acceptable entertainment vs privacy trade off. Sure, it’s also a waste of time, but so is everything else you don’t like.

This is a valid contrarian take.

Facebook knows where you live, where you shop, who you meet, what you say, what you buy, where you go – perhaps when you wake and sleep –… and in exchange, you get some chat rooms, a MySpace page, advertised at, and to be a non-consensual subject in psychological experiments. (Libel notice: they might not do the last one much any more.)

Most of this happens if you 1) sign up for FB 2) install their app. If you don't do both of these things they can't track you, right?

Unfortunately this is not true.

Just loading a page that has the embedded Facebook Like button generates data points on you regarding your browsing and purchase history. I'm not sure if they can/do read the contents of a checkout form, but it would be simple to infer coarse location and strong identity from that.

You don't need to read the contents of a checkout form when the company just gives you the data. (Companies upload their customer lists, so Facebook can compute “conversions”. But, of course, Facebook doesn't let companies download the data Facebook has, and compare on their end… that would be a violation of privacy!)

Even you don't sign up for FB, they keep a shadow profile on you from activity from people searching for you.

Even if you don't sign up for FB, they get your contact information from your friends. (That might just be WhatsApp, but at least one of the two gives people the "opportunity" to upload their contact list to find matches.)

Sure, FB knows a lot less about me than they could, but keeping off their radar entirely is effectively impossible.

False.

See Facebook "shadow profiles", data collected on persons either through third-party activity (though the profiled individual is on Facebook), OR on persons not using Facebook at all.

https://theconversation.com/shadow-profiles-facebook-knows-a...

https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/facebook-shadow-profiles-pr...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile

> ... be a non-consensual subject in psychological experiments.

This makes me think of this one fascinating/frightening prospect I sense in respect to the vast collections of data of human behaviour which the big tech corporations have: The data that Google and Facebook posess are so rich that they'd allow very insightful analyses of human behaviour. I recon there are so many small questions about why people do what they do, how their whole personalities are wired, how they influence each other through internet/analog interactions, how societies develop dynamically through which mechanisms.

Many of these questions are being studied by scientists at universities but they usually don't have the same huge/rich data sets that the internet giants have.

So Facebook & Co have a huge advantage in understanding all these things about humans over public research. But whenever they actually do some analysis and get answers, the result is by default internal knowledge that remains unknown to the public. Also, most of their analyses will be driven by commercial interest, rather than seeking anwers to philosophical questions that don't promise financial returns.

There are many questions about our world that could have been answered since years, using all this data ... but they haven't been and might never be.

Letting some big company have the power of understanding how people tick better than any other agent in the world. A thrilling prospect.

> FB & Instagram present a perfectly acceptable entertainment vs privacy trade off.

I'm glad you're here to establish this objective fact for those of us who didn't know ;-)

perfectly acceptable /s

Because the network effect reduces choice and competition. I don’t get to vote with my wallet with Facebook. I can participate in society or not have Facebook.

My mom was recently told by a state elected representative that she would have to contact them through Facebook to provide feedback on legislation. This is not a “valid tradeoff” nor does it have to do with “entertainment”.

Because this morning I tried to post a link to a Social science podcast from sage publishing and it was blocked because it violated community standards.. The topic, Unobtrusive resistance of people without formal power.. (and meanwhile on the FB watch video tab that no one asked for, "he thought she put the whole think up there XD. for entertainment only."(lady standing over coke bottle))

I deleted my Facebook after Cambridge Analytica. How is this "perfectly acceptable" in your mind? Are you not aware of the severity of this leak?

CA was a 3rd party developer that misused data users authorized them to use and it happened 10 years ago when FB was still essentially a startup. They’ve come a very long way.

Indeed - they've increased the scale of their atrocities against their own users quite a bit since then.

I have also noticed this the past couple weeks. I don’t think it’s related to Facebook- I deleted my Facebook account before 2019. However, I’ve also recently had discussions with Twilio (all of the below is non-confidential information according to our conversation):

The carriers are cracking down on sms spam. They are going to force registration of all businesses sending texts, not just with services like Twilio, but with them. And prices / rent-seeking from the carriers is going up - they are going to charge for each campaign/brand you run. So in the end you’ll see less spam, but texting will also cost more for companies that send them.

The initial rollout by AT&T was supposed to start 5/1, though that’s now been pushed back. Spammers are likely in their death throes, trying to get their last spam out before they get shut down or priced out.

To get an account on Facebook, one can use an email address to sign up (no phone number), and if the email address later becomes invalid, the Facebook account still remains viable. As such, a "disposable" email address should work for the purpose of obtaining a Facebook account. One need never log in to the "throwaway" email account ever again after the Facebook account is established.

If one really wanted to use a phone number for sign up, a disposable number such as a "burner" phone should work.

Prepaid burner numbers don't work, only postpaid.

What does the email-only flow look like? Every time I've tried that I've been redirected to various kinds of "additional authorization" or "proof of identity" barriers and haven't been able to find a flow around them.

Not sure what the sign up flow looks like today. What I know is that in the past students created Facebook accounts^1 using their student email accounts. They graduated, the student email accounts were deleted, but their Facebook accounts continue to work today, even though they never updated their email addresses with Facebook or added phone numbers.

1. The website was originally created for students and sign up used to require a university email address.

I have been getting a lot of spam texts and also an unusually large spam calls from the social security administration. I tell teh guy/gal on the line every time to quit calling me because they are wasting their time and i know it's a scam, they keep calling...

I don't think the little guy that's calling you cares that much, or that the organization that runs the call center is organizaed well enough to receive a piece of information from the bottom end employee and act on it.

It’s antisocial to demand someone submit to surveillance capitalism to participate in a club or a friendship.

Complain loudly, and delete your fb account. Be a nuisance about it at club meetups.

Caving just makes it worse for the next guy.

I feel your pain. Getting announcements from my local skating club is the only reason why I keep my FB account. :(

You should disable apps api on your profile.

I can tell you why. It's because you gave FB your personal phone number, while any number would work, e.g. a prepaid sim card (a one time 15 bucks expense).

I did some research and it seemed as though the companies would auto-renew and make it incredibly tough to close the accounts. I wouldn’t be surprised if some went so far as to send people to collections for “fees”.

You don't need to give your ID or sign up for auto renewal.

There’s no auto renewal, contract, or collections for a prepaid sim. In most states you don’t even show ID to get one. Just give whatever name you’d like on the caller ID and pay the first month.

Can you show me an example of one that can be purchased online? I didn't notice any on Amazon when I looked. (for curiosity's sake)

I’m not sure about online, but I know you can walk into a T-mobile store with $15 cash and walk out with a SIM card.

Used that method as my primary cell phone contract for many years.

I haven't looked into it recently, but it must be easy. Many games have SMS verification for accounts, and it seems that every person that streams those games has like 10 accounts.

Or a Walmart. Years ago, before Google Voice, I got one because I needed a local area code number for my apartment's buzzer. Mainly to see that if I could do it, I did things as anonymously as possible: bought a Tracphone at Walmart with cash. Turns out you needed an existing phone number to activate it, so I used the payphone that was outside a nearby gas station.

Or better yet, have someone else walk into the brick&mortar store to buy it for you

With the amount of facial recognition going on at large stores....probably a good bet. I'm not so concerned with the privacy as the ability to cancel without repeated 30 minute phonecalls to customer service.

Interesting, didn't know this can differ based on the state. Which ones do/don't let you do this?

Please be aware that this is not true for all countries. I can, for example, not get a SIM without submitting ID and proof of residence (if not already covered by ID).

but more likely, someone else uploaded their own entire contact book which included your number and likely email at one point

I signed up before Facebook ever required phone numbers.

I never gave Facebook my phone number.

I never had a Facebook app on any Android device, ever.

When I use Facebook, it's in a sandboxed browser that I never log into any other site with.

Facebook, for a time, started autofilling a prompt with my phone number, asking me to complete my account setup.

When Facebook has an app and all the people you know send their contacts to it, they don't need you to give them your phone number for them to have it.

In my case it's even worse - someone else signed up with my email address ...

Ebay recently got my number too, not sure how. PayPal perhaps.

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