Hacker News Reader

Comment by rndgermandude | Hacker News Reader

Just ask twitter about it... They will tell you you're a bot unless you pony up a "real" phone number, and then they get breached and tell people: sorry you will get doxed now because we lost your data, but you shouldn't have used your real phone number[1].

[1] "If you operate a pseudonymous Twitter account, we understand the risks an incident like this can introduce and deeply regret that this happened. To keep your identity as veiled as possible, we recommend not adding a publicly known phone number or email address to your Twitter account."

https://privacy.twitter.com/en/blog/2022/an-issue-affecting-...

View on HN

"They will tell you you're a bot unless you pony up a "real" phone number ..."

This is my 2FA mule:

https://kozubik.com/items/2famule/

There are others like it, but this one is mine.

While I consider this a very elegant solution, I find it hard to justify paying $8/month for a cellphone plan because others don't do their homework.

What I suggest if you have the opportunity to go anywhere south of the USA is buying a 2$ claro SIM chip and putting 2$ on it at least once every 3 months or so in order to maintain it (Can even maintain payments over the internet as long as you can understand the Spanish website). This makes the monthly cost around 66 cents a month/$7.92 a year for an SMS verification mule, and it will receive texts anywhere that has GSM band 1 without having to activate roaming or anything expensive like that.

Is there a way to automate this? I would be afraid of forgetting to top it up and then having the whole thing fall apart. Personally, it is worth $5/mo to me (Tello's cheapest plan: no data, 500 voice minutes, unlimited text) to not have to deal with manual payments.

I dunno about automating this but I have a calendar for that

> I find it hard to justify paying $8/month for a cellphone plan because others don't do their homework.

Whenever I hear things like this, I like to remind people that they should be most concerned about outcomes, not about what satisfies their indignance. I agree that this situation is ridiculous, but being mad about it isn't going to change the state of the world. If you're genuinely worried about giving out your primary phone number for 2FA or account verification purposes, then this is a solution for you. Being pissed at companies for leaking data is not a solution.

You are absolutely right, and it's definitely a rational choice to give in and buy a dedicated cell phone plan for this purpose.

To my defense, I didn't argue that being pissed at some company would solve anything :)

Yes, but because so many others don't do their homework, you have to take it upon yourself to protect yourself. $8/month does seem like a stupid fee to pay, but for those willing to do it, it isn't that much. Those kinds of companies may even have a pay for 12 months in advance and it get a lower rate.

Could do it cheaper with some more obscure MVNOs https://prepaidcompare.net/

My first thought was "paying for a second SIM just for that sounds like a pain", but then I read to the end and saw that you're using a service for $8/mo. Had no idea such a thing existed. I clicked through their plans, and it looks like you can reduce that down to $5/mo if you ditch the data plan and select 100 voice minutes / unlimited text. I figure for such a device, you can just connect it to wifi, and don't need a data plan.

I guess it's nice to have the backup, though, in case the local internet connection goes down. The 500MB/mo plan bumps it to just $6/mo.

This is clever. Don't mind if I borrow your idea. I wonder if I can automate the setup...

I'm a fan of US Mobile personally. They let you make a custom plan that has ONLY sms, so you don't pay for what you don't need. Can also add minutes at will for $1. Bonus of choosing the underlying carrier.

you can provision in API/IP-enabled "mobile" number through a provider like Twilio or competitors, do everything in software (or do nothing regarding custom software and just enable SMS forwarding in the provider's UI), and pay fractions of pennies per SMS, plus a monthly fee for the number like $1.50.

See my comments elsewhere in thread, but a "VOIP" number is a ridiculously tiny corner case in the world of telco, hence lack of support.

I wish this were the case - believe me, I have tried many different API provided phone number endpoints and they are discriminated against by banks, google, etc.

In fact, twilio even started offering special numbers that are flagged and "vouched for" that should be treated as non-VOIP ... but they aren't.

If you really need it to work, it needs to be a number from a physical SIM card.

Unfortunately, many services have started blocking any number not currently associated with AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon or a major regional carrier. Even legitimate 'mobile' numbers from tiny carriers and MVNOs are getting blocked.

Nope. I had a "burner" voip used for providing to retailers/etc who wanted a phone number for no reason. I would migrate the number yearly. Unfortunately those are now rejected.

Are you not worried that permanent, 24/7 connection to the charger, will destroy the battery, make it blow up, swell, or something in that line?

Modern phones have overcharge protection, as long as that's in tact (no reason to think it wouldn't be), it'll be completely fine. The worst that might happen is your battery capacity will degrade slightly faster than it would otherwise.

It's Lithium not Nickel-Cad

$8/month is ridiculously high for what you're doing with that. You're effectively paying over a dollar per text message?

I kept contacting support every time my account got blocked for not providing a number stating that i refused to provide a phone number. I think after the second or third time they decided i was human and haven't had a block since.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com