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Sites like smspva.com would have dozens of those devices, should they be illegal? I can think of uses of these devices, yes most of them are “grey market” but t
by costco 3y ago
Sites like smspva.com would have dozens of those devices, should they be illegal? I can think of uses of these devices, yes most of them are “grey market” but they don’t involve stealing from people.
By “A2P fees” I’m referring to the fact that in most countries it costs more to send an SMS with Twilio than a 5000 message or unlimited message retail plan. I won’t deny that some SIM farms are used for scams but if you look at the countries that have banned them the reasoning is not because of fraud it’s because they have a monopoly phone provider and people effectively use these devices to convert international calls or SMS like verification code messages to domestic so that they don’t have to pay higher termination fees which costs the carrier some profits. They can also make tracing calls harder which is why India bans them. But given that there is VOIP I don’t see why banning this would prevent any fraud.
- orf 3y ago> Sites like smspva.com would have dozens of those devices, should they be illegal? Your argument is that since this clearly sketchy service ran from Hong Kong that is dedicated to giving people the ability to automate signups on sites/apps and “earn money using our service” utilizes dozens of these devices, these devices are OK?
- costco 3y agoPlenty of civic minded people find services like these useful for registering Signal accounts not tied to their own number. Or for scraping sites like LinkedIn. There are companies like this run from other countries if you don’t trust Hong Kong. I don’t think arguing that some unknowable fraction of fraud traffic flows through these devices is persuasive when the legislative conversation in the countries that banned these devices is almost entirely about carriers losing some termination fees and national security fears.
- orf 3y agoI mean it literally advertises itself as a service that enables people to make money by bypassing restrictions that require phone numbers. You might not make money using it and instead just use it to sign up for a single signal account, but you’re not really the target audience in that case.
- costco 3y agoThe people making money from it wouldn’t exist without people buying the verification codes. If you Google smspva or services like it and read forum posts about it the majority of discussion is about people using it to automate account registration.
- orf 3y agoYes, hello?? They often use those registered accounts for malicious purposes which generates income for them?
- costco 3y agoSorry, I misread your previous comment. The site doesn’t advertise itself as a way to make money, its just incidental to how some people make money. Is scraping a malicious purpose? Maybe in some cases. Either way I don’t see why this use of sim boxes shouldn’t be a civil dispute between companies and needs to be something the government should criminalize. Fraud is already illegal.
- orf 3y ago> The smspva website has been operating since 2013. During this time, we have gathered a large audience of users who trust us and earn money using our service And the use case they showcase involves mass creating Facebook pages. Come on. Are you really truly that naive? It’s vaguely legitimate business that just happens to offer a service that’s super useful to a particular type of clientele. Just like bulletproof hosting.
- costco 3y agoIs that supposed to always be bad? Unless the pages are used to promote some kind of fraud I don't think that's illegal. It's "dual use" like any other kind of anonymity technology. Cloudflare says 90% of Tor traffic is malicious - does that mean hosting relays and using Tor should be criminalized? Regardless, that was just a minor point about one potential use of SIM farms. The proposal says they intend to make possession a criminal offence and they don't even have data on whether these devices are used for fraud at scale in the UK.
- incone123 3y agoIn the UK we can still get anonymous SIM cards for cash, if you want an anonymous Signal account. Having recently looked at commercial SMS gateway pricing, I am inclined to the argument that these devices have a role in thwarting rent-seeking on the part of telcos.