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It really upsets me that the VHF pager networks were shut down. VHF pagers were the last way you could recieve notifications without having to offer up your lo

It really upsets me that the VHF pager networks were shut down. VHF pagers were the last way you could recieve notifications without having to offer up your location to surveillance. All satellite pagers require transmit-before-receive, and of course LTE requires that plus actively cooperating with the towers' triangulation of the receiver. VHF POCSAG over large urban areas is something we never should have let go of.

ale42 3y ago
Plus, VHF signals can get where no LTE or satellite can arrive, even if you are two floors underground. Downside is that anybody can read POCSAG, especially nowadays with inexpensive SDR receivers...
- karma_pharmer 3y ago
  Nothing prevents you from sending encrypted payloads over POCSAG.
  - ale42 3y ago
    Sure, you can send whatever you want... but is there any off-the-shelf solution that can display encrypted messages?
    - kotaKat 3y ago
      There are a bunch of POCSAG paging products that support their own flavors of encryption. Unication has a few that support AES encrypted messaging. You keyload it at the same time as the rest of the pager setup. https://www.unication.com/alpha-pagers https://www.unication.com/alpha-pagers And here's LRS's implementation of encryption on POCSAG: https://paging-systems.readme.io/docs/encryption https://paging-systems.readme.io/docs/encryption
      - ale42 2y ago
        Nice to see, thanks!
KennyBlanken 3y ago
"VHF pagers were the last way you could recieve notifications without having to offer up your location to surveillance" ...and instead anyone in your city can read every single text message with a trivial amount of hardware?
- oxygen_crisis 3y ago
  There's nothing wrong with open communication when everyone understands that it's open and treats it accordingly.
- karma_pharmer 3y ago
  They can read my AES-encrypted ciphertext all day long and I don't care. You can even buy two-way pagers that transmit with AES-128 encryption. Hospitals have to use this due to HIPAA: https://www.spok.com/blog/standard-or-encrypted-pagers-whats-difference-and-which-best-my-hospital/ https://www.spok.com/blog/standard-or-encrypted-pagers-whats... I think you're confusing commercial pager services with Ham radio.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  Usually pagers were used to ask people to call back so I don't think that is a big issue. It is like shooting at someone you recognize far away in the street so he can look back and meet you. Everybody will hear that but not the actual content of the conversation afterwards.
2024throwaway 3y ago
[flagged]
- MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
  Because the cell phone company logs that information and will turn it over to law enforcement without a warrant?
  - 2024throwaway 3y ago
    They can know I was at Costco too. I’m fine with that.
    - caseyy 3y ago
      Surely you're not saying you're fine with your location data leading to wrongful imprisonment, which is what sometimes happens if companies hoard this data? https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/southwest-valley/2019/07/31/jorge-luis-molina-says-avondale-police-used-google-data-wrongfully-arrest-him-murder-joe-knight/1873878001/ https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/southwest-valley/2...
      - 2024throwaway 3y ago
        If I go to prison for being at Costco, that was one WILD trip to Costco.
    - ryanbytes 3y ago
      [dead]
- caseyy 3y ago
  Yes, there are many reasonable arguments. For example: your data is sold to third parties you don't know, and they use it against you or in unethical ways. For example, visiting a mental health clinic might mean your car insurance rates go up, or Facebook adjusts their algorithm to cause you more distress and hook you more, or your credit rating goes down. Objectively, you are worse off because you were tracked. See a recent example with BetterHelp, where they sold their patients' history of mental health medications, suicide attempts, depression, and a few other things that were on an ingestion form to social media companies. After promising on the very form where they collected this data that they wouldn't do it. That is the reality of the situation. You turn into a product when you're tracked.
theodric 3y ago
Hams still have and use them.[1] I'm not a ham, because I don't want to hang out with self-appointed cops, so I got a new Chinese pager made up with a center frequency of 433.5MHz (ISM, unlicensed), then configured it to work with a Pi-Star rig radiating well under the EU/Irish legal power limit, and receive messages infrequently enough not to run afoul of duty cycle limits. Because I know there's some ham who's just salivating to track me down and quote the rule book to me, and I want to deny him (it's always a him) that pleasure. It reaches all the way to the far end of my farm! You can get traditional alphanumeric belt loop pagers or snazzy modern wristwatch pages these days. Check AliExpress. [1] https://hampager.de/#/ https://hampager.de/#/
- cdchn 3y ago
  >I'm not a ham, because I don't want to hang out with self-appointed cops Hams do have a "Whacker" problem. General Boomer mentality scares away a lot of new Hams as well.
- 7thpower 3y ago
  I’m not sure I understand the bit about cops. I’m interested though, please do tell.
  - theodric 2y ago
    The tedious sort of people who like to make it their mission in life to quote the rulebook as often as possible, frequently incorrectly, in an effort to assert their authority and dominance. I want nothing to do with them.
wkat4242 3y ago
Yes!! This. I would totally carry a pager if the network still existed. Not all the time, but just sometimes when I'd like to feel free. Ps there is still the iridium paging service which is one way and is not transmit before receive. But they want to get rid of it and stopped selling hardware. It's really hard to find now second hand.
- cubix 3y ago
  I was carrying a pager as late as 2009 because a customer's data center was two stories underground in one of the older tower blocks in downtown Toronto.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Yes it is amazing how good the coverage was. I had one and I've only been outside the coverage area once, when I went on cave trip. I noticed my pager said OUTRANGE which was something I had never seen any other time. The coverage really was phenomenal due to the low frequency (159Mhz).
- karma_pharmer 3y ago
  No, iridium is definitely transmit-before-receive. The only thing you can receive without transmitting is a one-bit "message waiting" indicator, so you don't waste uplink bandwidth polling the satellite unless there's something there for you. Basically the satellite broadcasts a list of terminals that have messages waiting for them. I recall there being some kind of bloom filter, so technically it's less than one bit. You can't get anything else downstream unless you transmit first to ask for it. Also the only way to clear the "message waiting" bit is by transmitting to the satellite, so you can't even try to encode a message by flipping that bit on and off.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    No, the original Iridium paging service really is (was?) one way. You had to manually update your paging location by dialing some number or by using a web interface when moving significantly, or link an Iridium phone to your pager, which would then automatically update the paging area (MDA) every time you made a call. What you mean is probably Iridium SBD, but that’s a different, bidirectional service (also used for pager-like devices these days).
filleokus 3y ago
In Sweden the "minicall" network (POCSAG, ≈ 169 Mhz) is still active and in use by some niche industries. I know of it being used for fairly mundane things like Grafana Alerts (or the equivalent), but in circumstances where you need to reach people in areas where cellphones are forbidden or lack coverage (like security sensitive data centers for example). Snooping on that frequency band in ≈Stockholm it also seems to be quite actively used for sending machine-to-machine commands in some industries, perhaps not always that stringently authenticated... Which I guess is a downside though, you need to take proper precautions in the "application layer" since the network is completely open.

ale42 3y ago

Plus, VHF signals can get where no LTE or satellite can arrive, even if you are two floors underground. Downside is that anybody can read POCSAG, especially nowadays with inexpensive SDR receivers...

karma_pharmer 3y ago
Nothing prevents you from sending encrypted payloads over POCSAG.
- ale42 3y ago
  Sure, you can send whatever you want... but is there any off-the-shelf solution that can display encrypted messages?
  - kotaKat 3y ago
    There are a bunch of POCSAG paging products that support their own flavors of encryption. Unication has a few that support AES encrypted messaging. You keyload it at the same time as the rest of the pager setup. https://www.unication.com/alpha-pagers https://www.unication.com/alpha-pagers And here's LRS's implementation of encryption on POCSAG: https://paging-systems.readme.io/docs/encryption https://paging-systems.readme.io/docs/encryption
    - ale42 2y ago
      Nice to see, thanks!

KennyBlanken 3y ago

"VHF pagers were the last way you could recieve notifications without having to offer up your location to surveillance" ...and instead anyone in your city can read every single text message with a trivial amount of hardware?

oxygen_crisis 3y ago
There's nothing wrong with open communication when everyone understands that it's open and treats it accordingly.
karma_pharmer 3y ago
They can read my AES-encrypted ciphertext all day long and I don't care. You can even buy two-way pagers that transmit with AES-128 encryption. Hospitals have to use this due to HIPAA: https://www.spok.com/blog/standard-or-encrypted-pagers-whats-difference-and-which-best-my-hospital/ https://www.spok.com/blog/standard-or-encrypted-pagers-whats... I think you're confusing commercial pager services with Ham radio.
prmoustache 3y ago
Usually pagers were used to ask people to call back so I don't think that is a big issue. It is like shooting at someone you recognize far away in the street so he can look back and meet you. Everybody will hear that but not the actual content of the conversation afterwards.

2024throwaway 3y ago

[flagged]

MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
Because the cell phone company logs that information and will turn it over to law enforcement without a warrant?
- 2024throwaway 3y ago
  They can know I was at Costco too. I’m fine with that.
  - caseyy 3y ago
    Surely you're not saying you're fine with your location data leading to wrongful imprisonment, which is what sometimes happens if companies hoard this data? https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/southwest-valley/2019/07/31/jorge-luis-molina-says-avondale-police-used-google-data-wrongfully-arrest-him-murder-joe-knight/1873878001/ https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/southwest-valley/2...
    - 2024throwaway 3y ago
      If I go to prison for being at Costco, that was one WILD trip to Costco.
  - ryanbytes 3y ago
    [dead]
caseyy 3y ago
Yes, there are many reasonable arguments. For example: your data is sold to third parties you don't know, and they use it against you or in unethical ways. For example, visiting a mental health clinic might mean your car insurance rates go up, or Facebook adjusts their algorithm to cause you more distress and hook you more, or your credit rating goes down. Objectively, you are worse off because you were tracked. See a recent example with BetterHelp, where they sold their patients' history of mental health medications, suicide attempts, depression, and a few other things that were on an ingestion form to social media companies. After promising on the very form where they collected this data that they wouldn't do it. That is the reality of the situation. You turn into a product when you're tracked.

theodric 3y ago

Hams still have and use them.[1] I'm not a ham, because I don't want to hang out with self-appointed cops, so I got a new Chinese pager made up with a center frequency of 433.5MHz (ISM, unlicensed), then configured it to work with a Pi-Star rig radiating well under the EU/Irish legal power limit, and receive messages infrequently enough not to run afoul of duty cycle limits. Because I know there's some ham who's just salivating to track me down and quote the rule book to me, and I want to deny him (it's always a him) that pleasure. It reaches all the way to the far end of my farm! You can get traditional alphanumeric belt loop pagers or snazzy modern wristwatch pages these days. Check AliExpress. [1] https://hampager.de/#/ https://hampager.de/#/

cdchn 3y ago
>I'm not a ham, because I don't want to hang out with self-appointed cops Hams do have a "Whacker" problem. General Boomer mentality scares away a lot of new Hams as well.
7thpower 3y ago
I’m not sure I understand the bit about cops. I’m interested though, please do tell.
- theodric 2y ago
  The tedious sort of people who like to make it their mission in life to quote the rulebook as often as possible, frequently incorrectly, in an effort to assert their authority and dominance. I want nothing to do with them.

wkat4242 3y ago

Yes!! This. I would totally carry a pager if the network still existed. Not all the time, but just sometimes when I'd like to feel free. Ps there is still the iridium paging service which is one way and is not transmit before receive. But they want to get rid of it and stopped selling hardware. It's really hard to find now second hand.

cubix 3y ago
I was carrying a pager as late as 2009 because a customer's data center was two stories underground in one of the older tower blocks in downtown Toronto.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Yes it is amazing how good the coverage was. I had one and I've only been outside the coverage area once, when I went on cave trip. I noticed my pager said OUTRANGE which was something I had never seen any other time. The coverage really was phenomenal due to the low frequency (159Mhz).
karma_pharmer 3y ago
No, iridium is definitely transmit-before-receive. The only thing you can receive without transmitting is a one-bit "message waiting" indicator, so you don't waste uplink bandwidth polling the satellite unless there's something there for you. Basically the satellite broadcasts a list of terminals that have messages waiting for them. I recall there being some kind of bloom filter, so technically it's less than one bit. You can't get anything else downstream unless you transmit first to ask for it. Also the only way to clear the "message waiting" bit is by transmitting to the satellite, so you can't even try to encode a message by flipping that bit on and off.
- lxgr 3y ago
  No, the original Iridium paging service really is (was?) one way. You had to manually update your paging location by dialing some number or by using a web interface when moving significantly, or link an Iridium phone to your pager, which would then automatically update the paging area (MDA) every time you made a call. What you mean is probably Iridium SBD, but that’s a different, bidirectional service (also used for pager-like devices these days).

filleokus 3y ago

In Sweden the "minicall" network (POCSAG, ≈ 169 Mhz) is still active and in use by some niche industries. I know of it being used for fairly mundane things like Grafana Alerts (or the equivalent), but in circumstances where you need to reach people in areas where cellphones are forbidden or lack coverage (like security sensitive data centers for example). Snooping on that frequency band in ≈Stockholm it also seems to be quite actively used for sending machine-to-machine commands in some industries, perhaps not always that stringently authenticated... Which I guess is a downside though, you need to take proper precautions in the "application layer" since the network is completely open.