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How SMS fraud works and how to guard against it

apuchitnis.substack.com

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Re: How SMS fraud works and how to guard against it

#2
This makes the assumption that Twitter blocked it due to SMS fraud. While that's a plausible theory an equally plausible theory is that they were worried about account hijacking and security (and allowed twitter blue subscribers to continue to use it on a you can pay me to be stupid context) which seems equally plausible.

I take issue with a lot of the assumptions in the article but this is funny:

> Identify and block premium rate phone numbers, using libphonenumber. Whilst this seems promising, I don’t know how reliable the data and how effective this approach is.

here's this purpose-built and well maintained* library from google which does exactly what I want but i'm not even going to consider it.

* the actual number database has been updated 5x so far this year: https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/commits/master/meta...

Re: How SMS fraud works and how to guard against it

#3
Fraud requires that someone make a misrepresentation. Who makes a misrepresentation when SMS fraud is committed? What is the misrepresentation?

Is there any chance that this isn’t actually fraud and that companies who send out tons of text messages to any number a person specifies are just paying for their extraordinarily poor design?

Re: How SMS fraud works and how to guard against it

#7
post #5

If you haven't done this, set the MaxPrice field when sending SMS with an API provider such as Twilio. The message will fail to send if the cost of the sms exceeds the price you set. https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/360014170533-Us...

author here: awesome, thanks for sharing this pg_bot! :)

Re: How SMS fraud works and how to guard against it

#8
post #5

If you haven't done this, set the MaxPrice field when sending SMS with an API provider such as Twilio. The message will fail to send if the cost of the sms exceeds the price you set. https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/360014170533-Us...

author here: awesome, thanks for sharing this pg_bot! :)

What would be the reasonable value to set maxprice to?

Re: How SMS fraud works and how to guard against it

#9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

author here: awesome, thanks for sharing this pg_bot! :)

What would be the reasonable value to set maxprice to?

That's up to you; Twilio's pricing varies from country to country. US is less than a penny per text; Russia is $0.70 each. Set according to your needs.

Re: How SMS fraud works and how to guard against it

#10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

author here: awesome, thanks for sharing this pg_bot! :)

What would be the reasonable value to set maxprice to?

Depends on where you send SMS. Ten cents should cover most of the world, but there will be exceptions.
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