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Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
251–260 of 393 posts
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#252My wife and I cancelled our phone services a while back to save money since we rarely if ever have to call anyone and just use messaging to keep in touch with each other and friends. What are people like us supposed to do? I do have a Google voice number, but I noticed one or two places recently that won't accept that anymore.
> I do have a Google voice number, but I noticed one or two places recently that won't accept that anymore. Mind sharing where? I've use my Google Voice number exclusively for 6 or 7 years now. Can't say I've ever ran into such a thing.
Microsoft won't take any known voip account for an Azure registration, which created a minor challenge for me as all my numbers are google voice only as well.
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#253Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#254We're going this way as well (requiring & verifying phone numbers, not locking accounts). We don't have a problem with bots, but users in the "not so tech savvy" segment tend to switch/discard/forget their email address. Rather than try to recover their account with us, this group will subsequently just create a new one, and then wonder & complain that their profiles/settings/content/histories aren't carried over. We…
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#255They have been doing this for any account registered from a VPN or Tor. However, you can simply appeal the block and tell them you haven't tweeted and not broken any rules. They will send you an automated mail, offering to validate your phone number, or reply to the mail if your problem is not solved. Just reply to the mail. Unfortunately, processing the request takes anywhere between 10 minutes and 2 weeks; usually…
I tried to open a new account on Twitter app for Android, using only my email. It was going ok until it asked me to provide my phone after confirming my email. The reason: suspicious activity / spam behavior. The account is in limbo now, and I can't access it any more. Time to spin up a Mastodon instance.
fwiw, if you challenge this, twitter will restore your account.
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#256Just a reminder that tech companies will do anything to make more certain predictions for the sake of an ever expanding circle of clients:
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/02/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-s...
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#257I'm assuming it's to try de-anonymize users and make bots less cost effective. Nothing propagates faster than hate on Twitter and seeing as it's being actively weaponized to spread propaganda, I'm all for new measures that try slow the spread down - esp. given nothing else has worked thus far.
I wish there was a service out there that you could use your phone number and they will validate that you are real for companies and they would be separate from Twitter or any company using them so the user remains anonymous. I don't like some of the nasty stuff the net throws my way either but I do ultimately think if I had to choose a censored internet vs uncensored but full of negatives, I would chose the uncensor…
This almost sounds like something too good to be true. Big companies like Twitter and Facebook wouldn't want to use this service because they want to collect the data. This company would need to charge websites for the service, otherwise their only alternative is to sell their user's data or advertise, which leaves us right where we already are.
Of course there may be other ways for such a service to survive, but those are my initial thoughts about seeing something like this happen. I would love for something like this to exist, though
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#258Linking pseudonyms from two different networks (in this case, Twitter and the phone system) together is a classic and serious privacy leak. It's far from clear exactly what information Twitter, in its longtime effort to combat spam, has already collected on its users. Throwing a phone number into the mix expands to range of activities that can be unambiguously tied to the same individual. Given that Twitter certainly…
I agree. The first thing I thought was that someone will build a script that creates a Twitter account then simply uses Twilio's API to create a valid phone number to receive verifications.
Good luck Twitter!
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#259Linking pseudonyms from two different networks (in this case, Twitter and the phone system) together is a classic and serious privacy leak. It's far from clear exactly what information Twitter, in its longtime effort to combat spam, has already collected on its users. Throwing a phone number into the mix expands to range of activities that can be unambiguously tied to the same individual. Given that Twitter certainly…
I agree. The first thing I thought was that someone will build a script that creates a Twitter account then simply uses Twilio's API to create a valid phone number to receive verifications. Good luck Twitter!
It won’t do. Twilio (and basically majority of other virtual number providers, except of very tiny few located in Europe) do not provide regular cell-type text messaging capabilities, but rather something PBX pros call “short codes”.
No self-respecting provider out there, be it Twitter Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, Instagram, etc. will deliver your confirmation info via a short code. so you need regular ported cell number like Verizon or Tmobile.
Twitter allows up to 5 accounts created on one cellphone number, given you give each other few days of rest and use popular VPN.
Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. The first thing I thought was that someone will build a script that creates a Twitter account then simply uses Twilio's API to create a valid phone number to receive verifications. Good luck Twitter!
It won’t do. Twilio (and basically majority of other virtual number providers, except of very tiny few located in Europe) do not provide regular cell-type text messaging capabilities, but rather something PBX pros call “short codes”. No self-respecting provider out there, be it Twitter Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, Instagram, etc. will deliver your confirmation info via a short code. so you need regular ported cell number…
Full disclosure: I used to work at Twilio.
We ported wireless numbers in and out all the time.