[HN Gopher] Welcome to Scam World
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       Welcome to Scam World
        
       Author : ipython
       Score  : 9 points
       Date   : 2024-04-26 20:32 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | aleksiy123 wrote:
       | I once had an idea for an app for managing multiple phone
       | numbers.
       | 
       | The idea being you would have a unique phone number or ext for
       | each contact you want to give. Don't know if it's viable or not.
       | 
       | But I think there's need to be a unique key for everyone you give
       | your number too.
       | 
       | This would enable two things.
       | 
       | 1. Discard it as soon as it has been compromised.
       | 
       | 2. Know who is leaking your information.
       | 
       | I don't really know if it's a viable solution to implement in
       | practice though.
        
         | barbazoo wrote:
         | Just like "virtual" credit card numbers.
        
         | runamok wrote:
         | There are 7,920,000 telephone numbers per area code and 335
         | area codes. See
         | https://www.puc.texas.gov/industry/maps/areacodes/txareacode...
         | and https://www.twilio.com/docs/glossary/north-american-area-
         | cod.... I don't know much about VOIP and how many of those
         | numbers are allocated. So that over 2.5 billion total #s.
         | 
         | Still I think you'd need extensions or something which probably
         | would not work with texting, etc.
        
         | redserk wrote:
         | I've been doing this with an eSIM and two VoIP lines doing call
         | forwarding.
         | 
         | So I have a line for:
         | 
         | - my personal line for friends and family (primary eSIM)
         | 
         | - utilities/banking (secondary eSIM because these seem to hate
         | voip numbers)
         | 
         | - store programs and shopping
         | 
         | - what I give out to people I don't consider family or close
         | friends
         | 
         | I initially ignore everything but the personal line.
        
       | felsokning wrote:
       | https://archive.is/jnDWT
        
       | teeray wrote:
       | My dream is that some day I can go into iOS and say "I want
       | anonymous calls and texts from Government Entities, Medical
       | Providers, and Utilities only." Everyone else needs to get into
       | my contacts first. Everything else is moved to a spam folder that
       | I barely ever see. Political parties would, of course, hate this,
       | but it is exactly what needs to happen to restore the usefulness
       | of SMS and phone calls.
        
       | nutrie wrote:
       | "You can try to block, encrypt and unsubscribe your way out of
       | it, but you may not succeed."
       | 
       | I'm doing pretty great, thank you very much. Haven't seen an ad
       | in decades, my spam folder is empty and on average, I get one
       | annoying call a year. What bothers me is the declining quality of
       | Google Search results.
        
       | kindawinda wrote:
       | Getting stopped by the Paywall to read an article about online
       | scams, oh the irony.
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-26 23:01 UTC)