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by estromlund
2395 days ago
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I’m the founder of Unlisted (https://www.unlistedapp.com) and this is exactly the problem I was aiming at when building our private number service. Unfortunately today, however, many sites will detect VoIP numbers and refuse to send messages to them. There are two reasons: 1) The app detects that it is not a “real” number and blocks its entry, or 2) the number is accepted but no message is ever received. In the second case, the “call with a code” option does usually work though. The reason is that short code providers negotiate delivery outside of the normal framework that long code (“normal”) numbers use. Most apps like Unlisted are using Twilio as a provider and these agreements just aren’t in place. I’ve been running Unlisted for over 6 years so have a bit of experience around this space. Am happy to answer any questions! |
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I admire the goal of trying to provide a convenient way to increase privacy when using SMS, but this feels a bit invasive. That's a lot of collected data. Unlisted has access to the entire history of all my conversations and calls. Why not encrypt most of the at-rest data with the user's password and decrypt it client-side? This is common practice for the more privacy-leaning email providers, such as ProtonMail. Similar SMS services have taken this approach as well, like crypton.sh.
You are leaving a lot of the privacy enthusiasts on the table (myself included). It may seem like a small market, but communities like /r/privacytoolsio are very active and constantly on the lookout for privacy preserving products.