7 ms·
Price of a bot army revealed across online platforms
- gnabgib 11mo agoDiscussion yesterday (172 points, 149 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46257871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46257871
- lrvick 11mo agoSince I do not have a smartphone or a cell carrier, I only have a voip number, which most sites think is a fake number. As a result I often have to use these shady SMS verification services to get my own personal legitimate accounts open.
- rogerrogerr 11mo agoI’d be curious to hear about your experience not having cell coverage in the modern world. What’s it like?
- codedokode 11mo agoMaybe they don't like having their precise location tracked 24/7?
- rjdj377dhabsn 10mo agoThat's a good reason for not carrying a phone, but getting a cheap SIM-connected device and leaving it at home next to their computer shouldn't reveal any more information than they already are by using their home internet and VOIP.
- lrvick 10mo agoSure but at that point I might as well just use the computer. Cell towers do not offer me much value I cannot obtain via wifi.
- octoberfranklin 10mo agoWhat’s it like? Blissfully tranquil.
- veqq 10mo agoIt's very nice. Phones are evil.
- daemonologist 10mo agoI went about six months without cell service a few years ago. The only deal breaker is this one - that lots of services require SMS authentication and won't accept Google Voice/similar. GPS navigation is a bit worse, because you have to pre-download the maps and don't get realtime traffic. You also can't be contacted when you're away from wifi; this wasn't a problem for me but I can imagine if you had kids or something it would probably be another deal breaker.
- lrvick 10mo agoNever been happier, and does not get in my way of doing anything as an owner of two tech companies that frequently travels. Phones are still optional for virtually everything in the US, though it sometimes requires talking to a manager.
- andai 11mo agoWhat device do you use the voip with?
- lrvick 10mo agoMy daily driver laptops and desktops, a payphone, and a number of DECT phones.
- andrepd 11mo agoI use them to avoid giving my real number to any shitty online service.
- ck2 10mo agoIf you live in US, get a tracfone with an annual 1500 minute plan for around $20-$30 You can just get a fliphone clamshell, they still do those and don't need a full smartphone (ironically the clamshell still runs android) They boot fast and battery can be pulled after This is how I do all the 2-factor that demands real SMS
- DecentShoes 10mo agoWould it not be easier to get a dumphone and a super low end phone plan?
- lrvick 10mo agoProbably, but it would increase my reliance on single point of failure device I have no control of and I would have to pay to support the current corrupt cellular network industry which is not appealing to me.
- modeless 10mo agoIf you're in the US you can get a real cell phone number with VoIP and SMS that works without a phone for $20/mo with Google Fi. You'd need a phone to set it up but after that you could just turn it off and still use VoIP and SMS from any web browser.
- gruez 10mo agoThere are BYOD prepaid providers that are even cheaper than that. The lowest you can get is ultra mobile's $3.50/month plan, but you need to jump through some hoops to get it working, like getting a physical sim in person. Tello is $5/month and you can activate online.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- lrvick 10mo agoI do not have a Google account or smartphone or use proprietary software so Google Fi is not a good option for me.
- pyrolistical 10mo agoDoesn’t that allow the shady sms service to take over your account? Tell support you’ve lost access to email and they might allow you to change it if you can still verify sms code
- NooneAtAll3 10mo agowell, the choice is between chance of account takeover - and having no account at all, y'know how would one "verify sms code" without a phone?
- conductr 10mo agoNot sure if it flags as fake but I'd look into getting a dedicated Twilio number, then just forward incoming texts to your email or something like that. It would at least get the "shady" part out of the equation as Twilio is pretty trustworthy.
- dylan604 10mo ago> as Twilio is pretty trustworthy. as considered by who? do banks accept a Twilio number as a valid number according to their security best practices?
- conductr 10mo agoI'd consider them more trust worthy to pass me a MFA code than some random shady website that the GP was currently using, but sounds like people have tried this and Twilio numbers are on a ban list for many services
- cobertos 10mo agoThis does not work, I've tried this before. Google verification for example would not accept my Twilio number as verification (about 2 years ago). You can lookup a phone number for the provider and numbers from Twilio or others tend to not be accepted.
- juhiparekh001 10mo agoInstead of using risky SMS verification services, consider a trusted VoIP platform such as CallHippo. Its virtual numbers are issued through legitimate telecom partners, which improves acceptance across websites while keeping your communication secure and professional.
- codedokode 11mo agoThese services are a good because sometimes you need to access some information in social networks, which is available only after registration. So what other choices you have? And they often do not even allow registration from desktop: - Google requires to scan QR code with a phone to create an account - Facebook requires a 3D face scan - VK requires to use mobile application - Telegram requires to use mobile application Desktop now feels like untrusted, shady device, used mostly by cybercriminals. Especially of you use Linux and enable "fingerprinting resistance" option. > To register a new account, online platforms require SMS (Short Message Service) verification Incorrect, see above. > A fake Facebook account registered in Russia can post about the US elections Facebook is blocked in Russia though. As for spam problems, require payment to add new contacts above the limit, and disable messaging to non-contacts. Or restrict messaging based on country/city (so that messaging to a different country is paid). > The average price of SMS verification for an online platform during the year-long study period running to July 2025 was ... just a fraction of that in the US ($0.26), UK ($0.10) and Russia ($0.08). That's outdated. With new Russian legislation, most platforms removed support for Russian phone numbers, so now you cannot even find a service that allows to receive SMS to a Russian number. Futhermore, if you Google such services, it seems that they use the same provider because all of them do not have any working Russian numbers.
- Forgeties79 11mo ago> Facebook is blocked in Russia though. I doubt that stops the IRA tbh
- NooneAtAll3 10mo agostops Irish revolutionary army from... registering facebook account in Russia?
- roblabla 10mo agoIn this context, it's talking about Internet Research Agency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
- mmooss 11mo ago> They argue that SIM card regulation could help “disincentivise” online manipulation, and say their tool can be used to test policy interventions the world over. Their solution is to deanonymize communication, which you're probably familiar with. That's not a tool for social good, but for government power. We could give government virtually any power, if we assume it will be used only for good. What's a solution to online manipulation that is actually a social good or cannot be misused? What's a freedom-promoting technology that can replace the disaster that is current social media?
- msy 10mo agoWe are in a situation where it's a choice between unchecked corporate/oligarchic power or government power, at least the latter is nominally accountable in a democracy.
- DFHippie 10mo agoAnd the unchecked corporate/oligarchic power is often just government power funneled through disposable, if rich, patsies.
- chickensong 10mo agoNo, you can choose to opt-out and DIY your solution. It may not be for everyone, but oh well.
- Seattle3503 10mo ago
- ChuckMcM 11mo agoOnce again I am reminded that "knowing" which accounts are fake is a knowable thing and yet social media companies don't mitigate them "because money" or "because DAU" Etc. When I was running operations at Blekko (a search engine) we were busily identifying all the bots that were attempting ad fraud or scouring the web for vulnerabilities or PII to update "people" data bases. And we just mitigated them[1], even though it meant that from a 'traffic' perspective we were blocking probably 3 - 4 million searches / day. [1] My favorite mitigation was a machine that accepted the TCP connection from a bot address and just never responded after that (except to keep alives) I think the longest client we had hung that way had been waiting for over 3 months for a web page that never arrived. :-)
- dom96 10mo agoThis seems to focus on "verifying" accounts using SMS, but I have never been asked by any service to do this. When does this happen?
- patcon 10mo agoI think this just means you're from a respected country or IP block (or email or phone carrier), and so your existence online doesn't provoke suspicion? :) I know some people dislike being reminded of this, but I share it because I'm personally always grateful to notice a new edge of it in my own experience: it's perhaps a dimension of privilege (which is neither good nor bad, just something to know that one [might] have, often in some subtle or hidden dimensions and not in others)
- Aurornis 10mo agoIt's common on services that are attractive targets for spammers or bots. Creating a new GMail account will require a phone number now, except maybe through a few avenues which are rapidly being closed. Signing up for popular social media services often requires a phone number. Signing up for free trials on a lot of platforms requires a phone number. Everyone knows it's not a perfect measure, but it substantially slows down bot and spammer signups. Even spammers who use these verification services may get an account created, but internally it will be assigned a higher index of suspicion and be more likely to be flagged. When services operate at Facebook or Google scale, they can start to notice when 30 accounts have used the same SMS verification phone number through one of these services in the past N days.
- jazzyjackson 10mo agoTwitter settled a lawsuit about this, there was a period where you could sign up without one but your account would be pretty immediately flagged for 'bot like activity' and asked for a phone number to confirm your humanity. They promised to use this for verification purposes only but of course used it for targeted marketing purposes. > The Complaint alleged that, from May 2013 through September 2019, Twitter encouraged its users to disclose their phone numbers and email addresses for security purposes, such as enabling two-factor authentication and establishing a method for recovering lost passwords. More than 140 million users provided their information to Twitter. https://www.arnoldporter.com/en/perspectives/blogs/enforcement-edge/2022/06/ftc-reaches-settlement-with-twitter https://www.arnoldporter.com/en/perspectives/blogs/enforceme...
- modeless 10mo agoI like this metric for service security. Which service is the most expensive to buy verification on? So far the best one I've found is Telegram at 166/$100, and the worst is Discord at 5044/$100. https://cotsi.org/platforms?platform=ds&view=map https://cotsi.org/platforms?platform=ds&view=map I wish they showed a graph of services, but it seems like you can only view a graph of countries per service.
- araes 10mo agoAdding on to this one since it was the only link to the map data. There's some other supplemental data available. The supplemental PDF [1] has a bunch of the vendor names and there's a Google Docs sheet that has the list of vendors and availability per area. [2] [1] https://www.science.org/doi/suppl/10.1126/science.adw8154/suppl_file/science.adw8154_sm.pdf https://www.science.org/doi/suppl/10.1126/science.adw8154/su... [2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Aialrzkl4kjk2WgQac5fd2uYIaWfsR0z5c8BgaJcjkk/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Aialrzkl4kjk2WgQac5f... The Vendors that actually got included in COTSI are these: Vendor1 https://sms-activate.org/price https://sms-activate.org/price 16,310,000 China Vendor3 https://5sim.net/ https://5sim.net/ Vendor 5,137,000 China Vendor5 https://smshub.org/en/main https://smshub.org/en/main 1,871,000 Indonesia Vendor7 https://smspva.com/ https://smspva.com/ 1,212,000 Nigeria Others got Reserved (and I guess maybe they'll be included eventually?) Vendor4 https://sms-man.com/ https://sms-man.com/ 2,751,000 USA Vendor6 https://sms-activation-service.com/en/ https://sms-activation-service.com/en/ 1,778,000 Russia Vendor9 https://2ndline.io/ https://2ndline.io/ 320,487 Vietnam
- rjdj377dhabsn 10mo agoI don't understand what these costs represents. The post focuses on SMS verification, which based on the general level of costs makes sense. A KYC-verified Binance account costs a lot more than they list. But if they're only counting the cost for SMS verification, why would it depend on service? Wouldn't only the phone number's country matter?
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- neuroelectron 10mo agoIncredibly suspicious that there's no mention of Reddit
- siegecraft 10mo agoDoes Reddit require sms verification? The last time I made an account it didn't even require a valid email (but you got the "validated email" badge if you did it)
- inemesitaffia 10mo agoDepends on your country. If you want I can shoe you the popup that asks for a number
- neuroelectron 10mo agoHowever, there is a market for bots.
- cookiengineer 10mo ago> They argue that SIM card regulation could help “disincentivise” online manipulation, and say their tool can be used to test policy interventions the world over. In Germany, you have to give ISP customer providers (help centers) a copy of your passport ID in a live video stream to authenticate. That was introduced since 2013, for all SIM registrations. So explain to me, again, how did this help reduce botnet traffic from Russia that uses proxy services of third parties that installed their proxy backdoors in free apps on the PlayStore under the disguise of marketing and advertisement? I don't understand why Google does not get any critique for allowing so much malware to be officially deployed via their PlayStore? They don't give a damn, have a history of not caring, and are the only point in the supply chain that is the problem. Every service provider that offers residential proxies is using those backdoors, and bought access for it from the advertisement companies. If you report their Malware or Spamware, they ignore it. Try it, you will be disappointed. Because AdMob and other agencies are their customers. It's the same problem with Microsoft hosting Azure tenants that do spamming, sorry, "marketing campaigns". Source: I track these companies and their rotating ASNs with zero tolerance for spam. [1] [1] https://github.com/cookiengineer/antispam https://github.com/cookiengineer/antispam
- uniqueuid 10mo agoThank you for that work. I hope it's asymmetric meaning one hour of your work wastes thousands of hours for bad actors.
- cedilla 10mo agoI don't think anyone made the claim that requiring identification while providing German phone numbers would do anything about abuse from Russian botnets or abuse from non-German phone numbers.
- chatmasta 10mo agoHow does blocking ASNs solve the problem you described, with proxy backdoors in apps? These will use residential/mobile IPs, right? That’s the point. btw, may as well name and shame: the biggest culprit is Bright Data, formerly known as Luminati, also known as HolaVPN (the Chrome extension where they got their start, promising a VPN, routing traffic through a few DigitalOcean boxes, while selling each of their millions of users as a residential proxy endpoint to industrial scrapers). Nowadays they do the same but without the SPOF: they license their “SDK” to app developers, who launder the liability on their behalf.
- Lerc 10mo ago>Co-lead author Anton Dek, a researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, I find it amusingly apt that research into fake accounts is done by someone who people must regularly assume is a fake name. You'd have to carry ID all the time with a name like that. This is what British people will hear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_%26_Dec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_%26_Dec
- derelicta 10mo agoFrom what I get from this article, is that the price for not having my activity directly linked to my identity is under 5 quid for a one time payment. Pretty sweet.