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TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

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Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#31

Post by rnk »

hashstring wrote: post #3

I do not agree with these practices. However, I do think there is room for protocols that verify phone numbers in a way. The spam and fraudulent calls that people receive and are hard to distinguish from “good” calls is a problem that deserves more attention.

Phone numbers have some value as a verification endpoint, but because it's so easy to steal people's mobile phone numbers via Sim jacking, calling the phone company and saying Hi. I'm xyz and I have a new SIM card and please transfer my number to me, it happens all the time, mobile phone numbers are not safe for this purpose.

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#32

Post by Andrex »

velavar wrote: post #30

I work in fraud prevention with vendors such as this. Let me be the devil's advocate here: trust and risk scores such as these are often very useful for identifying account takeovers and stolen identities in the financial and telecom worlds. We often see folks on HN complaining about how banks don't protect them from fraud losses - companies like this are how there is any hope left for some modicum of consumer protec…

How confident are we Telesign will never ever be the victim of a data breach?

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#33

Post by rnk »

methou wrote: post #10

I know there are several services that helps you with removing your data from data brokers continuously, but only limits to residents in Countries which has GDPR alike laws. I feel defenseless against these sophisticated international corporation mass surveillances. Sending GDPR to each of them when you have learned their existence is like whac-a-mole.

The only way to stop them I can forsee is them losing expensive lawsuits where the outcome is they have to ask your permission first, along with a clearing house to find out where all of them are so you can check and tell them no - of course they'll try to set it up legally so that if you use your credit card it will indicate default approval or something.

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#35

Post by rsync »

lxe wrote: post #25

Is there any legal way to obtain your own data from these companies? Does the US have any law that compels them to provide my own data they have on me and any derivative scores they calculate from it?

"Is there any legal way to obtain your own data from these companies?"

Of course there is: sign up and use their API.

For many years I had the "Ekata Reverse Phone" API enabled in my Twilio account which allowed me, for 8 cents or something, to query a phone number and see subscriber history, "related subscribers", address history, etc.

Kind of a neat party trick.

It also allowed me to verify and re-verify that the fictional nyms my SIM cards and phone numbers belong to have almost zero history or identification ...

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#36

Post by tpxl »

velavar wrote: post #30

I work in fraud prevention with vendors such as this. Let me be the devil's advocate here: trust and risk scores such as these are often very useful for identifying account takeovers and stolen identities in the financial and telecom worlds. We often see folks on HN complaining about how banks don't protect them from fraud losses - companies like this are how there is any hope left for some modicum of consumer protec…

> They're already doing something (invisible as it may be). They can definitely do a better job. But without companies such as Telesign, fraud losses would far, far worse.

Until banks accept that they got defrauded, not you, whatever they do will be too little.

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#37

Post by sharikous »

velavar wrote: post #30

I work in fraud prevention with vendors such as this. Let me be the devil's advocate here: trust and risk scores such as these are often very useful for identifying account takeovers and stolen identities in the financial and telecom worlds. We often see folks on HN complaining about how banks don't protect them from fraud losses - companies like this are how there is any hope left for some modicum of consumer protec…

>> worst that should happen is that you get a transaction declined, or get denied for a credit card

Which, in a cashless society, can mean you have no money since you can't spend it

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#38

Post by zie »

Andrex wrote: post #32
velavar wrote: post #30

I work in fraud prevention with vendors such as this. Let me be the devil's advocate here: trust and risk scores such as these are often very useful for identifying account takeovers and stolen identities in the financial and telecom worlds. We often see folks on HN complaining about how banks don't protect them from fraud losses - companies like this are how there is any hope left for some modicum of consumer protec…

How confident are we Telesign will never ever be the victim of a data breach?

Since the NSA has shown they can't do it, I'd venture to guess the likelihood of Telesign or any other company being breached is approaching a 100% chance.

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#39

Post by velavar »

tpxl wrote: post #36
velavar wrote: post #30

I work in fraud prevention with vendors such as this. Let me be the devil's advocate here: trust and risk scores such as these are often very useful for identifying account takeovers and stolen identities in the financial and telecom worlds. We often see folks on HN complaining about how banks don't protect them from fraud losses - companies like this are how there is any hope left for some modicum of consumer protec…

> They're already doing something (invisible as it may be). They can definitely do a better job. But without companies such as Telesign, fraud losses would far, far worse. Until banks accept that they got defrauded, not you, whatever they do will be too little.

> Until banks accept that they got defrauded, not you, whatever they do will be too little.

True. Regardless of accepting responsibility, I think they're spending a good bit of money in preventing fraud from happening [1]. Maybe some regulation around banks taking fraud losses would do the trick but the flipside would be that simple financial flows of legitimate customers would become full of friction as banks race to lock down fraud losses. Fraud detection is a really hard fraud problem for even a human, let alone models.

[1] https://bankingjournal.aba.com/2022/01/study-banks-see-rise-...

Re: TeleSign profiles half of the world’s mobile phone users

#40

Post by zie »

lxe wrote: post #28
humanistbot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California does, but not federally.

So as a California resident, I can request data from them under CCPA? According to this: https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#sectionc , yes?

Assuming they do business in CA, so CA law applies, yes. That doesn't mean they comply with the law, and as far as I know, enforcement is mostly still on a ya, sure we will get around to it someday attitude.

So, just because you can in theory, doesn't mean you can in practice. Let us know how it works out for you!

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