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Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

I can vouch for this. There were a myriad of cases I brought to my boss, the director of operations for a major wireless carrier that was absorbed into another one that still exists. "They are paying their bills, right?" was all I could get. I had text messages scrolling on my desk in a different workspace all day. Agencies would have me grep for homicide threats between gangs but that's about it. I was not only required to support spammers and scammers, but also required to make sure everyone's messages got through quickly, including those that were overloading my gateways from SS7 links controlled by obvious scammers. I was not allowed to get the hicap folks to decom nefarious SS7 links. This was a long time ago and I doubt the situation improved.

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> Agencies would have me grep for homicide threats between gangs

As an aside, it's terrifying that our texts can just be read and mass processed like this.

I'm sure, in the general sense, this information isn't used for evil. But certainly I think it can be, like those Ring Doorbell employees who used their access to stalk their victims.

The case for secure messaging services only grows stronger, even for the innocent.

I guess we have to choose our poison. If the chat is RCS on both ends then it's Google or Apple reading the text. I don't buy any of the E2EE marketing. Some time force your phone onto LTE over Wifi and watch who it is talking to. Even with RCS every keypress on Android at least goes to the wireless provider over a VPN tunnel for spell check. I found it still does this even if I disable spell check, just less. If it's plain text messaging then it's still plain text over SS7 and the wireless provider can see it in their messaging gateways. I just assume any messaging sent over a phone insecure.

I'm sure, in the general sense, this information isn't used for evil.

Maybe. I do know there have been cases of people bribing lower tier support in wireless providers to do SIM swapping. I don't know how often this occurs or how often they get caught. Things are logged but someone would have to know to look at the logs. I've also heard that employee churn is high in support so they might be long gone by the time anyone looks.

> If the chat is RCS on both ends then it's Google or Apple reading the text. I don't buy any of the E2EE marketing.

The “E2EE marketing” around RCS applies solely to messages sent between Google Android devices on both sides. Otherwise, RCS is plain text like SMS. The carrier can read it all. This includes Apple’s implementation.

Works the same way as old-school junk mail. Your postal service gets paid well by junk mailers to put trash in your mailbox, so they're disincentivized to fix the systemic issue. I can't find a good quality source on this, but it's been said that about 45-50% of USPS & Canada Post's revenue comes from junk mail. They could fix it, but it would probably lead to a collapse of the entire post system due to revenue shortfalls. A true tragedy of the commons.

I was pissy one day after my mailbox was so full the mail carrier say it in front of the mailbox and I came up with a solution I haven’t tried — return to sender!

This would decrease their profit per-item by 1/2.

Key piece tho, are you able to return pre-sorted mail to sender?

You can’t. USPS thought of this a loooong time ago.

Frankly, junk mail is one of the primary things keeping the USPS afloat.

I did some research and you can send a letter to the post master to request they stop delivering for certain addresses. Seems there’s a service for this too

https://www.paperkarma.com/product/paperkarma-subscription/

> Mail Withheld From Delivery. An addressee may request his or her postmaster, in writing, to withhold from delivery for a period not exceeding 2 years any foreign letter or printed matter bearing a specified name or address appearing on the outside. Such mail is marked “Refused” by the Post Office™ and treated as undeliverable.

https://about.usps.com/what/business-services/delivery-growt...

The assertion that scam texts are the same as junk mail is absurd unless you believe that there are unsophisticated victims falling for junk mail offers. I don’t buy the comparison at all.

I assume the point is “there is no economic incentive to fix the situation” … but that is an extremely generic claim.

> I can vouch for this. There were a myriad of cases I brought to my boss, the director of operations for a major wireless carrier that was absorbed into another one that still exists. "They are paying their bills, right?" was all I could get.

I would have loved to ask him if he'd do business with Stormfront or ISIS as long as they were "paying their bills." It's not just the top of the food chain, these middle managers are all morally bankrupt, too.

I can't comment on ISIS and their ilk but I can say that wireless companies absolutely love drug dealers unofficially speaking of course. They pay cash, pay on time and always keep their accounts active. Some have multiple phones. A disabled phone is lost revenue.

Congress is hearing complaints and so getting interested in this. Thus providing incentive. Of course the incentive to carriers is to stop the scams congress will be interested in, while allowing the rest.

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