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wow, quite expensive. Looks like the cheapest non-Russian number is 54k sats (UK), for a 4hours rental.
you usually have only 1-2 activation SMS in such a time frame
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in that case you're better off just doing regular receive twice. which would be 6k sats.
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This is cool, but what if maybe I need phone calls too?
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Let's say the only bottleneck is that it isn't implemented yet. But if it could be done, then maybe you would plug the virtual phone number into Signal and use as a phone service? If that worked and if you could subscribe to the virtual number long term, combined with PGPP (pretty good phone privacy), you could break free from cell phone tracking, which is potentially the last bit to being completely untrackable.
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i haven't personally used this service, but check out https://silent.link
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I've used silent.link, same thing, you get an esim but no phone service, only data, and they can still track your IMSI, you will be triangulated, and soon enough deanonymized. PGPP is in theory better since the innovation is that they can't track your IMSI since it rotates with random values.
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silent.link recently added US/UK inbound voice identities.
they claim your mobile number is not known to your local mobile provider due to roaming and an adversary cannot collude with your local mobile network provider to surveil you.
they also claim they do not have the nessacary data to assist with triangulation, however, an authority could jump through several hoops if they know the IMEI (hardware identifier) alongside previous location data to continue tracking the IMSI (number identity) through a local carrier. seems fairly difficult to accomplish if i'm understanding correctly.
o'dell had them on a citadel dispatch episode recently. you may have already listened. he begins discussing the triangulation topic around ~21 minutes. https://bitcointv.com/w/qnFErBK86d6XKzNXzbXfda
obviously not a perfect solution. it does appear to be one of the better options currently. they seem based and working in the right direction.
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Does this only work for one-off messages? Or is it possible to send a message and then also get a message (or more than one) back?
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we have 3 features on S4S. Send, receive and rent. You can send messages (3k sats/msg) and then you can receive sms activations (3k sats/code)
We're working on a feature where you can recall one of the numbers you used in the past to receive an additional sms.
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I notice this seems new to sms4sats:
Use Hold Invoice (Automatic Refunds)
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yep, no more refunds needed. Payments are finalized only when code is actually received!
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would be good if you can rent numbers for more than 4 hours (eg, for 4 months or a year)
I can't see any reason why phone calls would be necessary. In principle though, we should all be refusing to do business with any company that requests such private information.
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will definitely continue growing and adding new capabilities. feel free to join our telegram or follow on twitter. https://twitter.com/sms4sats https://t.me/sms4sats
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why not matrix / mastodon?
much better than the centralised spyware services you are using there!
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do you mean instead of twitter and telegram as a contact option? this is a small operation so it's difficult to even maintain 1 support/communication channel. I think I'll add email support just as a short term fix.
Otherwise I need to drop everything and look into "social media management software" that includes all of these options. which is not a priority compared to making the service better.
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