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Comment by ChrisArchitect | Hacker News Reader

Was going to ask how common pagers were, but suppose still used by emergency services etc and especially in warzones of questionable cell network reliability

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Hezbollah reportedly bans its members from carrying cell phones and has them carry pagers instead:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pagers-drones-how-...

Thats an interesting attack vector on its own. Who does not regularly carry a phone with them these days?

That was a mistake. If they'd gone for the thinnest smartphone they could buy, there'd be no chance of anybody hiding a small bomb inside it.

Assuming you aren't joking: Pagers are receive-only, which is why they'd use them in preference to cellphones, which transmit even when just idling to register on cells.

Pagers are receive-only

This has not been true for some time. Pagers attach to a network in the same way a cell phone does. It is true they are more reliable in the receive only sense, as they can receive the broadcast message in the area they last attached to and the acknowledgment is not required to see the message but they do indeed transmit.

Not these pagers

Yes, almost certainly HA was running a POCSAG network.

Pagers are immune to a number of threats that two-way communications devices enable.

With a cell phone, the bomb is conveniently express-shipped to you by F-16. Or thoughtfully hand-delivered by the Mossad Postal Service.

Although, if I was an intelligence agency or police force, I’d definitely give pagers a second look, right? Like they have uses but somebody picking a pager over a cellphone is doing something unusual—maybe something unusual and good, like running an emergency services organization, but still unusual enough to take a second look.

also make it hard to triangulate your location

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