Firefox's New Service Gives You a Burner Phone Number To Cut Down on Spam (theverge.com) 31
Firefox Relay, a Mozilla service designed to hide your "real" email address by giving you virtual ones to hand out, is expanding to offer virtual phone numbers. From a report: In a blog post Mozilla product manager Tony Amaral-Cinotto explains that the relay service generates a phone number for you to give out to companies if you suspect they might use it to send you spam messages in the future, or if you think they might share it with others who will. The idea is that handing out this alternative phone number makes it easier to block spam phone calls or texts in the future. You can either block all calls or texts sent to your relay number, or just block specific contacts. Importantly it lets you keep your "real" phone number private, which is something you might want to consider if it's a number you use to receive sensitive information like two-step verification codes via SMS. Once you've signed up, the Firefox phone number masking service offers 50 minutes of incoming calls and 75 text messages a month. The phone number masking service is also more expensive at $4.99 a month (or $3.99 a month when paid annually), while the email service offers a choice between a free tier and a premium tier costing $1.99 a month ($0.99 a month when paid annually).
See their range/prefix banned in... (Score:4, Insightful)
3.. 2.. 1..
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What they need to do is make spamming expensive. Receive texts is ok and sending spam should be cheap enough to do once in a while ( think costing as much as a postage stamp, or even a bucj ) but prohibitvely expensive to abuse. I would sign up anonymously for a 1 MB mailbox that empties itself every 24 hours where you had to pay 1 dollar to send an email - if it were truely anonymous. I couldn't afford to spam enough people to cause the provider trouble.
Same for texts. Real anonymity is key though.
Not worth it at all (Score:5, Interesting)
A single phone number with 50 minutes for $5 per month and you can't change the number. There are much better and cheaper options for a burner number.
The only way this would be worth it at that price would be if you could change the phone number to a pool of phone numbers whenever you wanted.
Re:Not worth it at all (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, return the number to the pool and let someone else deal with your spam!
Except, what happens when everyone else has done the same thing?
This reminds me of "the guy in the story [wikipedia.org] who was caught in a sudden shower and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried, you see, because he figured when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."
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Return to the pool is fine if you only have it activated for short periods of times. If it is dead for 90% of the time or several weeks before given to the next person, even better.
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Doesn't work like that. When your number ends up in an autodialler / spam database it typically stays there, regardless of how long you have your phone activated. Bonus points for SMS spam where the spammer has no idea if your number is active or not.
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Apple already has automated fake emails. It is not a expensive or complex service. The phone number, though, that is a game changer. I think it has not been done because it
Please list alternatives if any exist (Score:4, Informative)
If there are better options put up or shut up.
SMS to a fixed phone number in my account information is useful for that 2 factor crap some sites who just want to spam or track people using the excuse of security.
I've not found a cheap VoIP that provided SMS. What I want is just SMS forwarding.
Having a non-profit do this for a reasonable price sounds ok... but $5 per month is nearly a full VoIP without SMS.
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If there are better options put up or shut up.
Having a non-profit do this for a reasonable price sounds ok... but $5 per month is nearly a full VoIP without SMS.
So you're agreeing with me that it is too expensive.
For SMS, there are services that charge only a few cents per SMS which $5 can buy way more SMS per month than this plan.
Then there are full blown cell phone companies like tello.com, usmobile.com, redpocket.com and other MVNOs.
Redpocket for instance currently has a plan for $2.50 per month with more minutes, texts, and data than this firefox plan.
These companies are providing phone, text, data, and a cellular connection for less.
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please share.
I'm also very interested in more than 1 type of solution in this space.
1. being a home phone that kids share to use on older android
2. a mostly anon phone for sms that works on desktop.(almost throw away, like for twiter or other accounts that require it, could use same num or diff)
I have yet to find any thing to solve either issue that I consider good enough or cheap enough. some are are both costly and poor solutions.
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please share.
I'm also very interested in more than 1 type of solution in this space.
1. being a home phone that kids share to use on older android
Most of the cheaper solutions are just like this firefox plan and limited minutes. Your best bet for a "home phone" for kids would be a voip phone assuming you already pay for internet. You can get an unlimited voip line under $10/month
2. a mostly anon phone for sms that works on desktop.(almost throw away, like for twiter or other accounts that require it, could use same num or diff)
For desktop, your best bet would probably be a sms service where you are paying a cent or two per message sent or received.
When I was saying there were cheaper solutions, there are prepaid cellular services like tello.com, usmobile.com, redpocket.com and other MVNOs. Red
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Can you sign up with tor and pay anonymously? There is a way to firewall all traffic for a given user to be proxied through tor. (doesn't work for groups last time I tried, though theoretically it should ). The way I used it was, i would log in as 'anon' who can only access the internet through tor, and then I'd use ssh to run firefox as 'me' when I needed to visit a site that didn't allow tor.
Not allowing your anon account to access the rest of your system can help if you get hacked via tor. Also not
What's wring with ... (Score:1)
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1-800-EAT-SHIT [theonion.com]
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This service is nice too for receiving SMSs (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.receivesms.org/ [receivesms.org]
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Haha Activision will love this. (Score:4, Informative)
Is Google Voice not a thing? (Score:2)
I know, Google, but Google Voice seems to offer a "disposable" phone number, free incoming phone calls (unlimited) and text messaging for the ultra low price of free.
Yeah yeah free, Google, etc. but it seems to be all this offers and more.
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Google Voice is still great, but a lot of people have figured out how to block you from using it for signing up for services. I do often use it for getting notifications of stuff that comes by text, for which it's very handy.
Making a mass spammer tool available to all (Score:2)
Sleazy phone spammers have been doing this for decades. Now any fraudster can make use of fake caller ID.
Spammers will buy these numbers in bulk... (Score:2)
you know what would be nice (Score:3)
if I didn't get a dumb fucking subscribe notification on every link I click on god damned slashdot
so far I have used:
eatadick@yomomma.com
fuckoff@die.net
fuckyr@ss.org
buttstuff@sex.com
and DTrump@truth.org
maybe they will take the hint
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doesnt matter, slashdot accepts it as a valid email address
Won't help the spam problem (Score:2)
Marketers, spammers, and phishers just use war dialing tactics. You can not trust the Caller-ID because it is usually forged to appear as if coming from your local state/area. If you have a number, any number, they will eventually dial it, so picking up a second virtual number as your burner will only succeed in getting you twice as many spam calls.
Its better just to have a call filtering service like Google Voice (the one I happen to know anything about) where the caller needs to actually leave their name
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Marketers, spammers, and phishers just use war dialing tactics. You can not trust the Caller-ID because it is usually forged to appear as if coming from your local state/area. If you have a number, any number, they will eventually dial it, so picking up a second virtual number as your burner will only succeed in getting you twice as many spam calls.
Its better just to have a call filtering service like Google Voice (the one I happen to know anything about) where the caller needs to actually leave their name so you can decide if you want to pick it up or not. Better yet, sign up for the pre-screening option where they hang up on spammers for you and you never need to know you missed that spam call. There are a number of services out there so Google (the great oracle of spam marketing) is not the only option out there.
One day I hope we will have cryptographically signed Caller-ID so all this BS can stop.
I've said this on the last call spam thread...
But seeing as most modern mobile phones are just computers with a phone application, why haven't we had a phone application that filters calls. We can start with rejecting known blacklists (or letting them ring out silently), then suspected bad calls can be answered silently and filtered (number harvesters disconnect immediately, a lot of spammer PABXs will disconnect if they think it's an automated line I.E. no audible response), then once it's passed throug
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seeing as most modern mobile phones are just computers with a phone application, why haven't we had a phone application that filters calls.
As long as you can spoof numbers that won't help. The telcos need to get on top of it and they're currently making money handling that traffic, so they are disincentivized to fix it.
Google does have spam call detection, it does help, but it can never be 100% so long as the telcos are willfully failing to solve the spoofing problem.