Hacker News Reader

you would think, but apparently anyone can now download an app called "talkatone" that gives you a free phone number to make calls and send texts with

View on HN

In some countries you can still buy prepaid cards which don't required any registration etc. and can be used across the entire EU anonymously.

It would be nice if we had tracert for phones. So you can see the route through which someone calls and what platforms/orgs.

Intelligence agencies around the world have collectively spent many, many billions on trying to achieve exactly that.

Then again, full mandatory deanonymisation wouldn't be required to just let people unsubscribe from calls from numbers aren't "genuine" in some way. There's a middle ground before "block all unknown numbers" that still lets the doctor's office call me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com