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Protect your privacy and your phone number with Firefox Relay

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Protect your privacy and your phone number with Firefox Relay

#81

Post by onetimeusename »

madamelic wrote: post #12

If y'all are interested in something like this, let me know. I wrote a service exactly like this [0] and it sort of flopped because the marketing plan was bad and I struggled to crack my (poorly chosen) target market of 'privacyfreaks'. If you want to re-co-found with me on marketing / sales, hit me up: maddie+hn[at]qnzl.co. I tried some pivots, sucked at marketing it, I occasionally get asked about where it went. --…

ya that's useful. I do like this service. I have noticed more and more that people are asking for phone numbers for app registration and even in person I have seen this. A phone number to me is private and personal.

The firefox service is priced well but 75 texts and 50 minutes of voice is fairly limited. The burner phone services that exist are too sketchy and too expensive for my taste.

I don't like marketing or sales but if you could market yourself as a privacy focused, Free/Libre solution that wasn't a sketchy fly by night operation and offered more than a closed source phone app I would subscribe.

Twilio itself seems to be oriented towards businesses and not individuals which is why I did not sign up with them.

Re: Protect your privacy and your phone number with Firefox Relay

#82

Post by sneak »

Spam calls are not the reason it is bad to give your number out; it isn’t related to calls at all.

Your number is your permanent cross-app, cross-company tracking identifier. It is a lookup key for your name, address, income bracket, email, spam history, etc.

This is why so many apps require it during signup.

Re: Protect your privacy and your phone number with Firefox Relay

#83

Post by auslegung »

janalsncm wrote: post #62

It would be great if someone could package several virtual services into one app. Virtual cc number, virtual email address, virtual phone number all with one click. That way I can sign up for some in-store membership with working info, get the discount, and never worry about my info being compromised.

I use Fastmail for what they call Masked Email, and Privacy.com for unique debit cards for shopping online. They both integrate with 1Password. So when I sign up for a new account, 1Password generates a Masked Email, a random password, and a unique debit card, and saves it all, and I LOVE IT!

Fastmail referral url: https://ref.fm/u26310488

Privacy.com referral url: https://privacy.com/join/JCPFN

Re: Protect your privacy and your phone number with Firefox Relay

#85

Post by srhngpr »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #2

This is cool. I've recently been thinking about getting a "burner" number for sharing outside my immediate circle. Same for email - the idea would be to have a phone/email for public consumption and then a separate address and number for my inner circle of family/friends.

Simple and free solutions exist for this exact purpose: TextNow, Fongo, etc. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33169096

Re: Protect your privacy and your phone number with Firefox Relay

#89

Post by jdofaz »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #72
mdasen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I look up my Google Voice number, it shows up as VoIP (not quite landline) with the carrier being Grand Central - SVR. It seems likely that Mozilla's service will similarly show up as VoIP. Some places are filtering VoIP numbers from their SMS verification schemes, but most places will let you sign up for promotional texts from a VoIP number.

Where can you "look up" your number? There was something recently around a game which was able to detect if a user's phone number was on a prepaid or postpaid plan. I had no idea carriers share this information with others.

https://www.freecarrierlookup.com

Re: Protect your privacy and your phone number with Firefox Relay

#90

Post by arrosenberg »

imagetic wrote: post #3

I like what Mozilla has been doing with their services, but they have built a very confusing business model of many micro services that I just don't see a ton of people signing up for as independent subscriptions. Why not bundle them all as one membership? Pocket, Mozilla VPN, Relay, Monitor, and whatever services they can scrape up premium options and features for to give them value?

A password manager would fit in nice. Maybe acquire Bitwarden.
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