Surprise Text Message Sent by Google Voice | Hacker News Reader

Surprise Text Message Sent by Google Voice

dpb.bitbucket.org

27 pointsluu11 comments

It's the kind of surprise a person has when someone says they're going to hit you if you poke them one more time and then you poke them.

It's just another in a long, long line of examples of how the Android permissions model is flawed. iOS has plenty of problems as well, but is much better about this. Rather than a laundry list of permissions when you install, it prompts as the app uses each one, and most importantly, gives you the ability to deny them in a granular fashion.

I've heard Google is working on something similar for Android and I really hope it happens sooner rather than later.

Cyanogenmod already provides this via Privacy Guard. I wouldn't be surprised if this made its way to the next version of Android; a lot of Android features were in CM beforehand (it used to be a running joke that Google got its ideas for what to implement next by copying the CM developers).

The CM installation process has gotten way easier (you now don't even need to wipe your phone or lose any data - it installs right on top of the stock ROM), so there's really very little reason not to use it over stock if your device is supported, IMHO.

After signing in to your google account from the gvoice app, google adds your phone's number and verifies it by sending a text; the message is the following:

"Google Voice will now verify your phone number by sending a text message from your phone to the Google Voice service. You will be charged your carrier's standard rate for text messages."

This happens the first time you log into the app, but it wouldn't surprise me that something similar happens from time to time to verify your phone number, a warning would be nice though.

How did he find out that the message was sent?

The message was a text sent to his phone, if I read it correctly?

Yeah, it sends a message to that number so they can call you back and connect your call, presumably.

I think that it said that a message was sent FROM his phone. You can view all messages (to and from) through voice.google.com.

"from my phone to a VoIP number 760-537-0537"

Sent from his phone to a Google phone number. Presumably he noticed it in his SMS app after it was sent. Or maybe noticed it on his phone bill.

Although interesting, I'm surprised blog post with so little content is on the front page.

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