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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

#121

Post by Vinnl »

prng2021 wrote: post #109

Is someone at Mozilla willing to share some technical details about how this is implemented under the covers? The main thing I’m curious about is: Can the ability to have multiple relay numbers tied to 1 real number be added relatively easily by scaling your technical architecture, or is there some non-marginal underlying cost to each additional relay number that would make such a feature too expensive to support at…

As I understand it there's a cost to every number, which is why we're limiting it to just one number at the moment. (Though we'd definitely have loved to implement it the same way we do email masks; if we do find a way to cost-effectively do so, I'm sure we will.)

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

#122

Post by bj-rn »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #34

Maybe this is a good place to ask: I'm a British expat living in the USA, and for a while now I've wanted a service which provides a British phone number, and forwards calls and texts to my US number, while also allowing me to send texts and make calls "from" the UK number if I want to. It looks like I might be able to do this with Twilio, but I'm not a developer, and quickly got frustrated trying to build what I wan…

Have you tried https://www.sipgate.co.uk ?

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

#123

Post by vineyardmike »

kroltan wrote: post #65
tailspin2019 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, very good points. I hadn't thought of the "which number did I give" complication.

I do the same thing with e-mail addresses, and solve this by storing it in my password manager. Phone numbers don't quite have the same dynamic, but just having the ability of throwing a given problematic number away would already solve so much.

> throwing a given problematic number away would already solve so much.

The search space of valid numbers is very small compared to email. A throw away number is surely a number that has already been trashed by dozens of users before you. It’d be useless unless you can make everyone forget it between users.

My personal cell number is 20 years old and gets almost no spam besides a rare robo call. Any throw away number I’ve acquire has a sordid history of being used as a honeypot it seems because it’s a cesspool.

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

#124

Post by Terretta »

Meanwhile, Hushed lets you get many numbers and costs less.

https://hushed.com/

"Since 2013, Hushed has offered consumers affordable private phone number solutions with fully equipped talk and text capabilities. With an expansive selection of phone numbers from over 300 area codes in the US, Canada, and UK, our goal is to provide a secure telecommunication experience for users around the world. Hushed offers mobile and local phone numbers from a variety of countries and area codes. We pride ourselves on the high-quality service we offer all our customers, and we believe that protecting your privacy is of the utmost importance."

// not affiliated

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

#126

Post by jasec57322 »

Mozilla has a massive trust problem.

They could still so easily regain much of their lost trust by sincerely apologising for their cock-ups (dodgy studies/data-collection, addons-fiasco, etc) and their political shilling; and yet, they do not.

The sewage they keep pumping out on their blog, and spaffing money on expensive rebrands, is turning-off the users who keep Mozilla alive.

Given how much they're doing for Google's market-share with this blatant self-sabotage, you'd be forgiven for thinking Mozilla is being run by Google.

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

#130

Post by Nextgrid »

bpye wrote: post #115
Nextgrid wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out Andrews & Arnold. They provide real 07 numbers that aren't classified as VoIP by most providers, so they will actually work fine for most online services too. (my company resells these with some add-on services on top, but for your use-case you're better off just going to the source directly)

I was tempted by this but I've heard they'll shut down your service if they figure out you're outside the UK? I still have a UK number at the moment but if I could port to A&A without worrying about this I totally would.

Maybe just reach out, they take pride in their support and are very accommodating. If their concern is about payment, you may get around that by offering to prepay for a year's worth of usage upfront.
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