111–120 of 127 posts
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I re-read this, not to fire back but to understand how you arrive at your conclusion. I think you are interpreting (or assuming maybe), from when I asked about his employer, that I suspected he stole the parts from his employer. That's not the case at all. I just needed a pressure point.
Didn’t you basically blackmail the guy?
But one of the really positive things about having so much "public PII" (SSNs, Addresses, phone numbers, birth days) is that people don't have to treat this information as some sort of secret. Everyone needs proper ID and eID because knowing someones digits doesn't make it any easier to impersonate them.
If someone wants my phone number, they take my email which has first- and last name, go to any of the N search sites and they find 100 people sharing my first and last name. If they know a city and approximate age (Which they can easily get from a social platform) they can narrow it down to just a couple of people. Public records then shows my birthdays, my cars, my income, who's also registered on the address, and so on. It's not difficult doing OSINT in Sweden...
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I know that iPhones with SIM+eSIM can have both active at the same time, and iPhones with just eSIM can have two eSIMs active.
Yeah I found this out the hard way when travelling recently. There are some great apps that let you buy cheap data-only eSIMs in dozens of countries. You can even buy an eSIM before you travel. It’s crazy convenient and much cheaper than roaming fees. My girlfriend could keep her home phone line enabled while using the eSIM but I couldn’t, even though we have the same model of phone! Turns out her home line uses a ph…
I would love to turn off my US eSIM when not in use (I think it uses more power connected to two cellular networks) but that would require unenrolling my US iMessage number and I can’t do that. Definitely the most annoying part of the whole thing.
I considered using a spare iPhone to host a physical SIM with my US number because that would allow the number to stay bonded with my Apple ID and potentially forward SMS over iCloud, but I decided not to because in my experience the SMS part is too flaky to be relied on.
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Yeah I found this out the hard way when travelling recently. There are some great apps that let you buy cheap data-only eSIMs in dozens of countries. You can even buy an eSIM before you travel. It’s crazy convenient and much cheaper than roaming fees. My girlfriend could keep her home phone line enabled while using the eSIM but I couldn’t, even though we have the same model of phone! Turns out her home line uses a ph…
Good news, with the elimination of the SIM card slot, they fixed this bug and you can have two eSIMs active with no chance of ever getting a physical travel sim to work! /s
(I used the Airalo app. No association. It worked great.)
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I re-read this, not to fire back but to understand how you arrive at your conclusion. I think you are interpreting (or assuming maybe), from when I asked about his employer, that I suspected he stole the parts from his employer. That's not the case at all. I just needed a pressure point.
Didn’t you basically blackmail the guy?
-not a lawyer, just work with too many of them
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Why would a phone company know a person's SSN?!
> Why would a phone company know a person's SSN?! As Brit-expat+US-resident (since 2012) T-Mobile got my SSN when I signed-up for my pre-paid first mobile phone plan in 2012. Paying $50/mo was quite a shock when equivalent (or rather: far superior) service was available in the UK on a PAYG (not even pre-paid!) basis for £10/mo. ...and now I'm on a $110/mo postpaid plan because eventually you get tired of the limitati…
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Yeah I found this out the hard way when travelling recently. There are some great apps that let you buy cheap data-only eSIMs in dozens of countries. You can even buy an eSIM before you travel. It’s crazy convenient and much cheaper than roaming fees. My girlfriend could keep her home phone line enabled while using the eSIM but I couldn’t, even though we have the same model of phone! Turns out her home line uses a ph…
I’m currently traveling internationally with an iPhone 12 and I can confirm the single eSIM + single physical SIM limitation. Although, in my case, I'm using a physical international SIM and a US eSIM. I would love to turn off my US eSIM when not in use (I think it uses more power connected to two cellular networks) but that would require unenrolling my US iMessage number and I can’t do that. Definitely the most anno…
It nags you but you don't have to agree to remove the number. I routinely replace my SIM card when traveling outside the EU and my iMessage number still works for green-bubble people. I ignore/refuse the phone's occasional suggestions to "update" the number.
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Good news, with the elimination of the SIM card slot, they fixed this bug and you can have two eSIMs active with no chance of ever getting a physical travel sim to work! /s
Bleh physical sim swapping when travelling is such a pain. I used travel data only esims all through the US, Europe and Egypt. All set up through a single app. I didn’t need to talk to dodgy airport phone shop people a single time in 3 months on the road - which, iPhone limitations aside, I consider a massive win. (I used the Airalo app. No association. It worked great.)
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Similarly to how Journalists feel justified in stories that have negative repercussions for some parties being reported upon. One way of assessing these decisions is answering the question "Is more harm done than good by releasing information this to the public?" From my perspective, I'm happy that Martin Vigo released this information (in 2019) as it helped me inform my employers (and now my clients) to additional t…
> Similarly to how Journalists feel justified in stories that have negative repercussions for some parties being reported upon. One way of assessing these decisions is answering the question "Is more harm done than good by releasing information this to the public?" That method leads to the worst evils in the world. Many have concluded, or used it to justify everything from, 'it's ok to take these poor people's land a…
This kind of uncoordinated leaking is a deeper problem. Many share the last four digits of a SS#. Okay. But often the first five are easy to guess from the birthday and the birth state. The first few digits tell the state where the number was issued.
Hell a lot of people have a last 4 digit that is literally just their mothers birth year.
And their mothers, assuming they were between 13 and 50 when they gave birth, would therefore have been born between 1850 and 2010.
So that's 161 out of 9999 available last-4's (0000 is not used) that could possibly be someone's mother's birth year.
And then, of course, it has to be the right year within that space.
I am guessing this was something that happened to a few folks by chance and then was blown up by people who don't understand how many coincidences can occur across a population of millions.