Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork • Hacker News Board

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#111

Post by mortenjorck » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

acobster wrote: post #75

pndy wrote: post #67

It's kinda amusing I'm reading this "news" by help of HN on BBC News page. Still, it seems to be really not interesting (typical to "silly season" or as we're saying here in Poland "cucumber season") as no other media outlet has copied it - well, beside Super Express but that's just a tabloid newspaper of same level as British The Sun, and they love such - pardon the word, shit.

"Scientists rack up huge phone bill - your jaw will DROP when you learn why!"

"Scientists HATE this trick to get free phone service!"

That said, while the article itself may not be much more than an anecdote, it does seem to have inspired some interesting SIM security conversations here.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#112

Post by reubenmorais » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

AnssiH wrote: post #66

reubenmorais wrote: post #2

Only tangentially related to the article, but where/how do researchers get global coverage SIM cards that you can just put on a stork and expect to get data/calling wherever it flies? I've looked for this before but only found what seemed like tourist scams with very high prices per MB/minute.

All providers/plans here (Finland) provide near-global non-free roaming. Is it different where you live? My provider lists ~190 roaming countries, not counting satellite/planes/ships, on their roaming rates page: https://elisa.fi/puheliittymat/kaytto-ulkomailla/

> Is it different where you live?

Yes, generally you have to activate intl roaming ~a week before you travel, by talking to a customer support agent on the phone, and it's limited to specific regions at a time. It's also ridiculously expensive.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#113

Post by rjsw » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

joshvm wrote: post #40

kevindqc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is something like that already. Look for "metered connections".

There is, but Windows 10 will disable this functionality after a month so you have to keep logging in to reset it. We had problems using a remote PC with a 4G dongle - programs like Office kept downloading updates even when Windows update was disabled. Having turned on metering, we didn't even think about it until the bill came through.

That must be a new feature. The registry keys are still set on my only Windows 10 machine to make all possible network connections metered.

It won't install the newest update anyway so I'm probably safe.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#114

Post by iliis » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

There was a similiar case in South Africa, where SIM cards were stolen from traffic lights and also racked up large bills: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-12135841

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#115

Post by xorcist » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

reubenmorais wrote: post #112

AnssiH wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All providers/plans here (Finland) provide near-global non-free roaming. Is it different where you live? My provider lists ~190 roaming countries, not counting satellite/planes/ships, on their roaming rates page: https://elisa.fi/puheliittymat/kaytto-ulkomailla/

> Is it different where you live? Yes, generally you have to activate intl roaming ~a week before you travel, by talking to a customer support agent on the phone, and it's limited to specific regions at a time. It's also ridiculously expensive.

The previous owner's migratory patterns likely made international roaming non-optional in this case.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#116

Post by wpietri » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 9:39 PM UTC

namibj wrote: post #96

m0dest wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately, no carrier will do this. I suspect that this is because of administrative fees associated with simply allocating a phone number and the network overhead from having a device associate with cell towers when idle.

You don't need a phone number if you don't need to be called on one, and you don't even need to be actively tracked in the home location database if you don't need to be reached at low latency at all. Think low latency=incoming call, no loner low latency=hourly email check. The remaining overhead is just renewing the sim once it degrades and keeping database space to allow it to associate if it turns the gsm module o…

That would be ideal in my case. It's data only and I'd be happy to leave the GSM module off 99% of the time if that made things cheaper.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#117

Post by wpietri » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

deepspace wrote: post #86

wpietri wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody know of one that doesn't charge a monthly fee? I have a product idea where I'd like to use mobile data as a backup in case of wifi network failure. So I'm willing to pay a higher per-MB fee if I can avoid a monthly per-SIM fee.

Twilio charges a relatively low monthly fee per SIM, starting at $2/mo. See: https://www.twilio.com/wireless/pricing

That is relatively low, but definitely not low enough in my case. The price point I'm thinking of is ~$25/year; giving 96% of my revenue to Twilio would not work. The device in question would be on wifi, so I really only need the mobile data to communicate in the rare event of wifi failure. And even then I don't need much data.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#118

Post by kweks » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

m0dest wrote: post #72

wpietri wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody know of one that doesn't charge a monthly fee? I have a product idea where I'd like to use mobile data as a backup in case of wifi network failure. So I'm willing to pay a higher per-MB fee if I can avoid a monthly per-SIM fee.

unfortunately, no carrier will do this. I suspect that this is because of administrative fees associated with simply allocating a phone number and the network overhead from having a device associate with cell towers when idle.

Knowroaming.com Essentially worldwide coverage, cheap rates, unlimited plans as well, no monthly fee, and only kicks in when you need it :)

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#119

Post by m-p-3 » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 11:38 PM UTC

jfries wrote: post #106

jacquesm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you enter the PIN?

The gps receiver's software could enter the pin. No buttons necessary.

I have a mobile hotspot, all of this is done through the WebUI over WiFi.

Re: Polish charity gets huge phone bill thanks to stork

#120

Post by dspillett » Wed, Jul 04, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #71

dspillett wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unfortunately not reliable. The only way to completely stop Windows 10 and certain other recent MS products from updating (for bandwidth cost or not-wanting-to-reboot-right-now reasons) is to not let the machine connect to the Internet at all which probably makes it useless for many situations. You could try running a server version of Windows instead, but you might find yourself unsupported in other ways (so…

In the Pro version you also can set it to "always ask before downloading updates", and that has worked reliably for me so far.

Pro licences here. Can't say as I've found an option like that. Is it relatively new? I've not dug around terably recently. Everything else people have suggested either hasn't worked or did for a while then changed after an update.