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It's not just about privacy -- you're one data breach away from having your phone number leaked to a bunch of shady gangsters who, for bonus points, can also re
by alxlaz 7y ago
It's not just about privacy -- you're one data breach away from having your phone number leaked to a bunch of shady gangsters who, for bonus points, can also read through the Twitter posts from the account associated with it. Pulling off a social engineering attack by phone is a hell of a lot easier than by email, which a lot of people, including non-technical people, treat somewhat more defensively.
I wouldn't mind sharing my phone number if it were for my protection, but it's not -- it's a risk for me, and they ask me to do it for their platform's protection. More specifically, for the protection of that platform's profits. I honestly don't mind bots, it's advertisers and politicians who do, and they're the ones keeping the whole thing profitable.
- miohtama 7y agoAs a counterpoint, I'd rather have everyone to have a forced phone number verification to mitigate the negative effects of the social network. We could quarantine privacy sensitive users, with all trolls and bots, to some darknet privacy discussion boards and something like Mastodon. I'd rather sacrifice the privacy for the general good experience of my Twitter service.
- alxlaz 7y agoPrevious experience with the Internet shows that all this would achieve would be a boom in the Temporary Phone Numbers as a Service (TPNaaS) market, so that trolls, bots and cybercriminals could get validated as easily as my grandma, while getting all those pesky privacy advocates out of the way. Edit: plus, I'm not sure how that invalidates my concern. The only thing better than a data leak with personal information is a data leak with personal information that's definitely true, up-to-date and complete -- and the only datapoints of dubious values belong to bots, making them easy to cross off your list.
- zelly 7y ago> Temporary Phone Numbers as a Service (TPNaaS) market It is very limited because phone numbers are gatekeeped by massive telcos. VoIP numbers are sold in blocks and are easily detected by phone verification systems.
- skinnymuch 7y agoThere aren’t that many legit (non Voip) numbers. They don’t come cheap en mass. I don’t think a thriving cheap market for them is possible.