Protect your privacy and your phone number with Firefox Relay • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by madamelic » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

nicholasjarnold wrote: post #14

jaclaz wrote: post #5

I don't understand the idea behind it. Now: 1) You give your real number to someone. 2) Somehow your real number goes into a list used by robo-callers. 3) A robo-call arrives on your real number, disturbing your peace. After: 0) You give Mozilla 3.99 or 4.99 US$/month 1) You give your Mozilla number to someone. 2) Somehow your Mozilla number goes into a list used by robo-callers. 3) A robo-call arrives on your Mozill…

Maybe you use it as part of a multi-layered approach to personal digital privacy. Without having hired a lawyer to dissect the TOS and Privacy Policy for Mozilla's new service here, I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that they will not sell the data to brokers. If that is true, then it's one more way to try and keep your true PII out of circulation. For instance, maybe you pair this with a high quality VPN…

Service-unique email / username + service-unique credit card is good enough for, I'd estimate, 95% of people.

You are trying to avoid wholesale scoops of info and automated credential stuffing. If your threat model is people specifically seeking out and targeting you: godspeed.

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

#22

Post by smileysteve » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

jaclaz wrote: post #5

I don't understand the idea behind it. Now: 1) You give your real number to someone. 2) Somehow your real number goes into a list used by robo-callers. 3) A robo-call arrives on your real number, disturbing your peace. After: 0) You give Mozilla 3.99 or 4.99 US$/month 1) You give your Mozilla number to someone. 2) Somehow your Mozilla number goes into a list used by robo-callers. 3) A robo-call arrives on your Mozill…

I effectively did this with Google Voice back when.

I would give marketers my Google voice number, it had better interface (and on cloud instead on device) contact management. I could send non favorites to a voice identification prompt (voiding all slow recordings or agents making multi calls that have a pickup delay) and for the final small percentage voice transcripts that I could determine if important.

Or for craigslist, I could forward calls to a phone for a short period of time, then turn off forwarding.

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

#23

Post by politelemon » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

groovecoder wrote: post #10

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?

(Mozilla Privacy & Security ENGR) Stay tuned ... :)

Since you're here looking, please could the relay custom domain feature support custom domains? At the moment it actually generates subdomains.

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

#24

Post by jaclaz » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

lalopalota wrote: post #18

jaclaz wrote: post #5

I don't understand the idea behind it. Now: 1) You give your real number to someone. 2) Somehow your real number goes into a list used by robo-callers. 3) A robo-call arrives on your real number, disturbing your peace. After: 0) You give Mozilla 3.99 or 4.99 US$/month 1) You give your Mozilla number to someone. 2) Somehow your Mozilla number goes into a list used by robo-callers. 3) A robo-call arrives on your Mozill…

If you get a spam call / text, you can block that number from calling / texting you again. I can already do that on my phone, and it is kind of useless due to caller-id spoofing that most robocallers use. Also, probably wont work for services that require a phone number but don't accept VOIP numbers. I wish the article addressed these issues.

>If you get a spam call / text, you can block that number from calling / texting you again.

>I can already do that on my phone, and it is kind of useless due to caller-id spoofing that most robocallers use.

Yes, I cannot see in which way this "black-listing" on Mozilla is different/better.

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

#25

Post by SadTrombone » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

darkarmani wrote: post #19

Isn't this Google Voice which was once Grand Central (12 years ago)? Forward your phone number to a different number through gvoice. For email, add a '+' symbol to your email address and filter them out if they get abusive.

> For email, add a '+' symbol to your email address and filter them out if they get abusive.

It's still trivial to parse your real email address from this. With Relay your real email address is completely obfuscated.

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

#26

Post by vmoore » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

> this feature is available in the U.S. and Canada

Bummer. Before reading this, I was so excited, since robocalls and sketchy SMS messages with malware payloads have plagued my phone for years, and now it's not available to me (I'm in the EU).

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

#27

Post by lucb1e » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

returnInfinity wrote: post #8

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.

If you put your real phone number in your Resume and share it with a recruiter, consider your phone number public. Also LinkedIn will give away your contact details. Your Bank or any service important to you may get hacked and your phone number leaked.

I feel like we have very different expectations of what recruiters can and will do with personal information. I'm from within the EU, you?

Not that they don't share your email to other persons working for the same company (I've had some name I never heard of from RecruitCorp email me seven years after I last talked to someone from RecruitCorp), or I could imagine they keep their contacts when moving into / out of self-employment, but that's a far cry from public.

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

#28

Post by bretbernhoft » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

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?

This makes a lot of sense. But maybe it's the direction that Mozilla is already headed in?

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

#29

Post by crackercrews » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

> Each month you will receive up to 50 minutes for incoming calls and 75 text messages. All phone number masking plans will include unlimited email masking. The cost is $3.99 a month for an annual plan or $4.99 a month for a monthly plan.

So you pay $4-5 per month and you're still limited? I was expecting there would be some free amount and after that it's paid.

Will this SMS work for account verification?

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

#30

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl » Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

jaclaz wrote: post #20

barbariangrunge wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is to give your real email and phone number to real friends and family; then you use the relayed one with online services who might sell or lose the data. Then you could presumably ditch the related info after the spam gets to be too much? Or maybe you just do it to be more anonymous? It’s like the concept of a “burner phone” I think

But - originally - you give a number (be it real or Mozilla or "burner") in order to be contacted by someone (and then somehow it was leaked to the robocallers). The moment you change or abandon the number (be it Mozilla or "burner") that someone won't be able to contact you anymore. But if you keep it, with the burner at least that someone will still be able to call you at the end of the month (when the the robocall…

But if you can use a unique number per service, you now know which company is selling your PII and you could address that either by switching to a competitor or, depending on the legal specifics, sue/expose them.