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WhatSim, a SIM Card for WhatsApp

whatsim.com

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Re: WhatSim, a SIM Card for WhatsApp

#21

Post by joosters »

I absolutely despise the weasel words that this site uses. It is full of outright lies and contradictions. Most misleadingly:

All Sims make you chat. But this one for free and without limits.

It's not free, it costs €10 for a year. Why then do they also claim 'it never expires' ? Why do they say that it has no limits, when the Rates page is full of limits?

I despise such deliberately misleading text. These people are behaving appallingly. Put up a simple page explaining the costs please (even the Rates page talks in terms of 'credits' and can't bring itself to talk about actual money except in the small print).

The website leaves me with the impression that this company is out to con me.

Re: WhatSim, a SIM Card for WhatsApp

#22

Post by unsigner »

sanju wrote: post #15
melvinmt wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't carry an extra phone for each messenger Then you're probably not part of the target market. In a lot of developing countries (India etc), WhatsApp is the primary reason to get a phone.

but developing countries still prefer to talk over chat.. if it comes to phone. young people in india use WhatApp as an alternative to email. so like we dont pay for email address.. no one will pay for WhatApp.. there are alternative like viber.. quite popular in india

You don't pay for an email address, because thanks to email interoperability (not openness, which is a separate albeit related thing) a free email address is a decent substitute for a non-free email address. Viber is not the same kind of substitute for WhatsApp when all your friends/family are on WhatsApp. (I live in a market where everybody is on Viber btw, so the WhatsApp card is worthless even if they paid me $0.01 for each WhatsApp message sent)

Re: WhatSim, a SIM Card for WhatsApp

#25

Post by emeidi »

Can it get even more retarded?

Will I have to switch between a dozen SIM cards in a few years when I want to send an iMessage, a Facebook message, upload an Instagram photo, conduct a Google Hangout session. Oh hell no.

Just give me a 4G enabled SIM card, a reasonable data limit (ie. 5GB) for an affordable price. I'll figure out by myself what I will use this mobile broad band connection for, thanks.

Re: WhatSim, a SIM Card for WhatsApp

#26

Post by pmontra »

rtpg wrote: post #14
fidz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first i felt the same, but after i fill the form and continue, it will redirect to payment gateway page, which is using HTTPS. Seems like it is legit. The payment gateway page shows that payment goes to ZeroMobile.it. Yeah.. i think they need a better flow.

but how can I know that this payment gateway is legitimately going to go towards WhatSim's account? Going from HTTP to HTTPS basically makes anything about this a crapshoot

I think you can't ever be sure of that. The data exchange usually is like this

1) Customer browser on seller site: the customer clicks on Pay

2) Seller server to payment gateway (hopefully over an encrypted channel): I'm S (important) and somebody is about the come to you to buy Y with order number Z. In case of success please redirect to U1, in case of failure redirect to U2.

3) Payment gateway to seller server: ok, thanks, my transaction code for this is T

4) Seller server to browser: redirect to the payment gateway (the browser has been waiting since step 1) for order Z (you don't mind if somebody pays for you)

5) Customer on payment gateway (https): check that S and Y are what is expected (this is fundamental), type in credit card data, click Pay.

6) Payment gateway to seller server (on a safe channel): transaction T has been paid for.

7) Payment gateway to customer browser: redirect to U1

8) Customer browser on seller server: page U1 says thank you for paying, goods are being delivered.

What makes you sure that the payment gateway is not a rogue one and will pay your seller? It's that you can see the order's data in step 5. However you can't be sure that the seller site has not been MITMed and you've been redirected to the wrong payment gateway. The only safeguard for that is the authentication and encryption in step 2, but that's not under your control. Https between the customer and the seller site doesn't make the transaction any safer.

On the other side, what makes the seller site safe against scammy customers is step 6, but I saw some eshops relying only on the information sent in step 7, which in some cases could be forged by the client.

Re: WhatSim, a SIM Card for WhatsApp

#27

Post by duiker101 »

joosters wrote: post #19

Wow, what a terribly misleading written FAQ: Does WhatSim work on all phones? Yes, it works on all unlocked phones. That question should be answered with a NO then. It doesn't work on all phones.

to be honest, basically every sentence on the website seems like a lie.

Re: WhatSim, a SIM Card for WhatsApp

#28

Post by Andrenid »

joosters wrote: post #21

I absolutely despise the weasel words that this site uses. It is full of outright lies and contradictions. Most misleadingly: All Sims make you chat. But this one for free and without limits. It's not free, it costs €10 for a year. Why then do they also claim 'it never expires' ? Why do they say that it has no limits, when the Rates page is full of limits? I despise such deliberately misleading text. These people are…

Yup way too many mentions of "free, without limits", considering:

€10 per year but they say "no expiry".

€.25 per photo (sent or received, I think)

€.50 per video

That's just for Zone 1. More than triple those prices if you're in Australia or any Zone 2 country.. and more than 6 times those prices if you're in Canada or any Zone 3 country.

Re: WhatSim, a SIM Card for WhatsApp

#29

Post by cr3ative »

Andrenid wrote: post #28
joosters wrote: post #21

I absolutely despise the weasel words that this site uses. It is full of outright lies and contradictions. Most misleadingly: All Sims make you chat. But this one for free and without limits. It's not free, it costs €10 for a year. Why then do they also claim 'it never expires' ? Why do they say that it has no limits, when the Rates page is full of limits? I despise such deliberately misleading text. These people are…

Yup way too many mentions of "free, without limits", considering: €10 per year but they say "no expiry". €.25 per photo (sent or received, I think) €.50 per video That's just for Zone 1. More than triple those prices if you're in Australia or any Zone 2 country.. and more than 6 times those prices if you're in Canada or any Zone 3 country.

I've dealt with a small amount of MVNO negotiations and this company has put many red flags up in my mind.

It may be obvious to someone else, but I'd like to know how they detect a photo or video being sent, rather than text? WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, so they can't be proxying the data to the servers. Are they just guessing from the total data transfer seen from the subscriber?

There's a lot of unanswered questions. The CEO appears to have a fairly poor track record of running this kind of freemium global-SIM project, too, having done some digging. I'll watch with interest.

Re: WhatSim, a SIM Card for WhatsApp

#30

Post by mistagiggles »

ahomescu1 wrote: post #3
andor wrote: post #2

That's interesting, but what are the rates for regular data and phone calls? I won't carry an extra phone for each messenger ;-) The site only lists the price for legacy MMS. Also, which country prefix will the phone number have, or do you get multiple numbers? People are usually hesitant to call numbers from other countries. Edit: I would definitely pay 10 EUR for something like this on top of my current plan. In th…

From the FAQ at http://www.whatsim.com/en/faq : Can I make calls, send text messages or surf the Internet? No, WhatSim only allows you to chat with WhatsApp.

Does this mean the phone needs to be a smartphone with WhatsApp installed? Or can a brickphone be used with this sim in order to communicate on WhatsApp?
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