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by Nextgrid 2189 days ago
> The people carrying out the abuse are sophisticated.

In this case wouldn't they build their own solutions (potentially based on existing open-source solutions like Asterisk + Linphone or Jitsi Meet) or they might've built them already?

Phone numbers are also very easy to obtain anonymously, so I am not sure SMS verification would help track down abusers when it'll lead to a prepaid SIM or some innocent user's phone that happened to be compromised by malware.
2 comments
neiman 2189 days ago
> Phone numbers are also very easy to obtain anonymously, so I am not sure SMS verification would help track down abusers when it'll lead to a prepaid SIM or some innocent user's phone that happened to be compromised by malware.

It depends on which country really. In some places in Europe it became almost impossible to do that (sadly).

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gonehome 2189 days ago
Yes, some would - but not all.

I agree that these reasons are why it's not a good idea to break or outlaw encryption since bad actors can still use it and good people that need it are blocked, but this doesn't mean that making it the default doesn't enable more abusers to get away with it that might be caught otherwise.

There's a spectrum of sophistication, if it's harder more of them will make more mistakes that make them easier to catch.

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fsflover 2189 days ago
So how do you define that giving away phone numbers is the right trade-off in the "spectrum of sophistication"? It effectively means lack of anonymous communications for everyone, i.e. global surveillance (personally identifiable metadata is in the hands of Zoom).
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gonehome 2189 days ago
I didn't say it was 'right', I said it was 'reasonable' - and there aren't easy answers to this.

Also to clarify, specifically a reasonable trade-off for Zoom (I don't think there should be a general law that requires IDs for video software use or something).

Zoom is not a company I would use at all if you're looking for secure communications (https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html).

If you care about secure communication you should be using something else.

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