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Comment by BuildTheRobots | Hacker News Reader

> I think in general the ability to spoof numbers should be banned / controlled.

This has absolutely nothing to do with burner phones and the proposed changes won't do anything to change that.

~5 years ago there was a big push (in the USA) to try and solve it with STIR/SHAKEN but I've not been involved or paid attention since then, so don't know if anything came of it. It's a legitimately hard problem to solve though. Lots of engineering and backwards compatibility technical problems, but also political, logistical and commercial issues are abound. You've also got some turtle issues too; it's attestation all the way down.

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> This has absolutely nothing to do with burner phones

That is not correct. There a phone farms operating purely on burner phones / disposable sims. Even for legit use cases, this path is often way easier/cheaper than go through official channels.

Use cases range from carrier-NAT proxies at < $1 per GB to text message spam.

But... what does your comment have to do with burner phones?

A burner phone is a phone number whose owner is not officially registered somewhere as the owner.

A spoofed phone number is a false declaration that you're calling from number XXXXXXXXXX when in fact you're calling from YYYYYYYYYY.

You might notice that there is absolutely no relationship between these two ideas. You can be registered and lie about your phone number. You can be unregistered and not lie about your phone number.

There are phone farms that exclusively use burner phones and do not need to spoof caller ID.

Let's recall the claim here:

>>> I think in general the ability to spoof numbers should be banned / controlled. Someone from India should not be allowed to call me with a caller ID from Mayo Clinic.

>> This has absolutely nothing to do with burner phones and the proposed changes won't do anything to change that.

> That is not correct. There a phone farms operating purely on burner phones

This is total nonsense. A phone farm that doesn't spoof caller ID isn't presenting false caller ID.

Wait, you’re right, I think I misread your comment somehow or got it mixed with another comment.

Sorry about that.

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