Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is there a pure SMS based UI?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 122 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is there a pure SMS based UI?

#31

Post by dashundchen »

Not that this is a solution for you now, but about 10-15 years ago there were a whole slew of SMS services which were super useful for those without data.

Google 311 (EDIT: actually it was Google 411) let you conduct full searches, local listings, full text turn-by-turn navigation, weather, movie listings etc. You could also call a number and do an voice search that would text you back the results.

Twitter, AIM, Facebook all had SMS based interfaces as well. I remember a privately run system which served up transit schedules.

Was amazing to younger me to be on a bus and able to continue my AIM chats and check the bus schedule without a data plan. You could get useful services sent to your phone and not get sucked in endless feed scrolling.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a pure SMS based UI?

#32

Post by snarf21 »

Areibman wrote: post #12
judge2020 wrote: post #8

The main issue with SMS is that it's unencrypted and often intentionally being piped to third party firms for advertising and whatnot, so whatever you do it probably isn't advisable to send anything you wouldn't want people seeing (eg. I wouldn't suggest doing email via it). If you have even the smallest data cap, https://lite.cnn.com can be used for your news and https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/ (/h/ at the end)…

If this is the case, why do so many apps use SMS for 2FA and sending unique links? Are MITM attacks over SMS common?

Most companies suck at security. Most users suck at security. Convenience > Security. It is sad that SMS as 2FA account recovery actually adds an attack vector. It is less bad as an out-of-band check if you have a password authentication from a known and finger printed computer.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a pure SMS based UI?

#33

Post by ufmace »

Areibman wrote: post #12
judge2020 wrote: post #8

The main issue with SMS is that it's unencrypted and often intentionally being piped to third party firms for advertising and whatnot, so whatever you do it probably isn't advisable to send anything you wouldn't want people seeing (eg. I wouldn't suggest doing email via it). If you have even the smallest data cap, https://lite.cnn.com can be used for your news and https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/ (/h/ at the end)…

If this is the case, why do so many apps use SMS for 2FA and sending unique links? Are MITM attacks over SMS common?

On the level of individual accounts, SMS has proven to be vulnerable to compromise. These attacks are pretty labor-intensive though. On the level of an app or service, SMS 2FA is still a big net gain in blocking account compromise though. Individual users, especially anyone who is at a particular risk for targeted attacks, would be wise to seek out more secure solutions.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a pure SMS based UI?

#34

Post by masswerk »

_wldu wrote: post #18
Areibman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is the case, why do so many apps use SMS for 2FA and sending unique links? Are MITM attacks over SMS common?

End user convenience.

Rather, adminstrative convenience. Mind that SMS-based 2FA replaced one-time pads (TANs), which required physical handling.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a pure SMS based UI?

#36

Post by HWR_14 »

moltke wrote: post #29
HWR_14 wrote: post #27

Most providers let you email phone numbers to send an SMS. I don't know if your LEO phone would. However, when I attempted it every "from" was a different random provider phone number (fewer digits than normal) Keep in mind SMSs are pretty rate/bandwidth limited in your use case. SMSs originally (and probably still in your case) were based on having 140 bytes of freeish data in the keep-alive style pings between towe…

I've never had the email/MMS gateways work. Personally I prefer JMP.chat which gives you a nice XMPP/MMS gateway and is much easier to work with.

Note that the OP must use SMS, not MMS.

In the US it wasn't an issue. What was the trouble? Keep in mind I was sending it to one or two people. I have no doubt it doesn't work on a mass scale.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a pure SMS based UI?

#38

Post by moltke »

HWR_14 wrote: post #36
moltke wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never had the email/MMS gateways work. Personally I prefer JMP.chat which gives you a nice XMPP/MMS gateway and is much easier to work with.

Note that the OP must use SMS, not MMS. In the US it wasn't an issue. What was the trouble? Keep in mind I was sending it to one or two people. I have no doubt it doesn't work on a mass scale.

JMP.chat does pure SMS by default, you have to ask to be part of the MMS beta.

I've only really tried AT&Ts gateways in the US from gmail, maybe something has changed but it never worked for me.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a pure SMS based UI?

#39

Post by oregondan »

This doesn't directly answer your question, but there's a nice SMS interface framework available for Django called RapidSMS[0]. It's been a few years since I've played with it, and never got around to testing "in the wild" / with a real phone, but, it makes the Request/Response SMS gateway mapping pretty easy to navigate

[0] https://github.com/rapidsms/rapidsms

Re: Ask HN: Is there a pure SMS based UI?

#40

Post by tetsusaiga »

coldsauce wrote: post #24

In 2014, I had a similar problem so I created Cosmos Browser, an Android based internet browser which allowed people to connect to the internet via SMS. It's pretty much dead now, but wouldn't take a lot of work to revive it if you really wanted to. https://github.com/ColdSauce/CosmosBrowserAndroid

Did this comment just remind you to update the readme? All 7 years old, and then 35 minutes ago, I love it lol. Very cool though
Post reply on HN