Especially in a world of number portability where you can't just say "oh, that's an old number, it must be POTS".
But I guess, here, if a number is from your contact list, it may still be POTS.
But at least you have higher assurance that it's an active user. If you wardial one day, you quickly find out how many numbers never lead to a human for various reasons. In theory, some of these are trap numbers and quickly flag the caller as suspicious, but I doubt it.
This isn't difficult - I wrote a shell script named "lookup" that will give me background info for any phone number I feed it and tell me what kind of number it is, what carrier it is, who it belongs to, etc.:
# lookup 415-333-2222
{"caller_name": {"caller_name": "WIRELESS CALLER", "caller_type": null, "error_code": null}, "country_code": "US", "phone_number": "+14153332222", "national_format": "(415) 333-2222", "carrier": {"mobile_country_code": "311", "mobile_network_code": "489", "name": "Verizon Wireless", "type": "mobile", "error_code": null}, "add_ons": null, "url": "https://lookups.twilio.com/v1/PhoneNumbers/+14153332222?Type=carrier&Type=caller-name"}
I'm not going to paste the entire script here but the meat of it is:
/usr/local/bin/curl -X GET "https://lookups.twilio.com/v1/PhoneNumbers/$number?Type=carrier&Type=caller-name" -u $accountsid:$authtoken
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27549075 ("Sorted Integer Compression")
main = traverse print [1..99999999]
this tweet says it's BS (they validated the japan sample)
A list of 3.8 billion phone numbers that simply exist is useless. The leak would only have value if the numbers were associated with some identifying information.
If it’s really only phone numbers, I wonder if it’s a leak or if someone brute-forced all possible phone numbers against a ClubHouse API that leaked information about whether or not the number existed in their database.
*https://futurezone.at/apps/clubhouse-leakt-38-milliarden-tel...
If this is only a list of numbers and their relative popularity, the best you can do is accusation of adultery (and even in that, you could say that you're "popular" because coworkers also store your numbers).
I refer here to the aspiring salespeople, not the person reporting it. I suspect this list will be available for free on the dark web within a couple of months. Much as I like to collect interesting data this doesn't seem useful.
For that matter, I have to assume that the shadier businesses silently make use of publicly available leaks. The data is just too valuable to ignore depending on your business model.
Genuinely asking.. might be dumb question
If the seller doesn’t get caught due to the purchasing methods and general routine OPSEC, then its just another example of the Fed reliably monetizing everything, meaning there will always be a buyer and everyone should sell more.
For instance in Denmark it is technically illegal to buy stolen goods, even if you genuinely aren’t aware of it being stolen. Im sure this applies to most countries.
I would ask for monero and would not care if the FBI is the buyer. The most they can do is to watch exchanges where monero is exchanged versus dollars or other cryptocoins. Then do this a few times over and start buying goods with those then sell the goods on Amazon/eBay for hard $$$. Small amounts and even with 50 cents at a dollar is still worth it for one person.
Though in Canada, I'm seeing them apply some cloaking measures so they don't get removed as quickly.
I think there's two streams of this:
1. a crooked telecom that has low-level access
2. buy a bunch of SIM cards and dump them into one of these aliexpress machines that has 16 wireless modems in them that let you do whatever you want:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000462982086.html
Can even network them to a bank thingy that'll hold 128 cards:
Let’s say you had the ability to do that 1,000x a minute using an automated dialer. Just in the US alone that would take you over a year to complete and how many of those numbers you verified changed active/disconnected status during that time?
(PS, I didn’t downvote you, just pointing out a problem with your theory)
In fact, I now wonder if you can even compress the 3.8b phone number set to less than 1 bit per phone number. It should be pretty doable since a significant chunk of the number space is not valid.
Additionally in most cases I'd think the lottery odds would be lower than the cost of traditional laundering (smurfing, through crooked banks, using cash based businesses like taxis etc.) Especially if you have to pay people to buy tickets.
Except for when it does: there are a bunch of people who have repeatedly jackpotted state lotteries, they're usually described as 'reclusive mathematicians'. But that isn't what I'm talking about. I just checked the TX Lottery Commission's site and it looks like scratchoffs would run, worst case, a 30% return. I can't be bothered to calculate the upper bounds, but I'd expect it to be 40%-ish. That seems good to me, I especially like that you can skip the part where you have to drive out to some hotel to meet an undercover Secret Service agent pretending to be a Wells Fargo employee responding to your help wanted notice in Soldier of Fortune.
This whole thing seems made up.
Also, some apps seem to do this with photos, asking for access, does anyone know if these apps also upload all of one's photos once the user grants permission on iOS?
That would eat up a lot of bandwidth. I suspect someone would notice it. An app could extract a lot of information from the metadata though, assuming it had access (I'm not sure how permissions on iOS work currently). It could also potentially run facial recognition algorithms locally (not sure how well that would work in practice though).
I guess I just wish we had more insight into what info companies take and how, permissions on iOS and Android seem to be getting more granular and yet still seem quite broad to me.
If anyone disagrees, I'm happy to sell my database of 100B valid phone numbers.
Not necessarily. Let me give you an example, if there’s other metadata included with a specific contact list entry, it would be valuable to have duplicate numbers, as that extra metadata could then be leveraged potentially.
Google is the biggest abuser in this area just grabbing all your contacts and linking them to your Google account once you add any Google account (like Gmail or Youtube) to your Android device.
Almost every social media startup in the last 15 years was bootstrapped this way.
After all that's how WhatsApp populates its contact list, it looks which users have each other's phone numbers. That way it doesn't need a user login and friend/contact requests, but in return you give up your privacy.
"After registering, the clubhouse app asks for access to your address book. This must be granted if you want to invite friends."
https://www.blogher.com/social-media/clubhouse-invite-withou...
https://www.gizchina.com/2021/03/16/clubhouse-new-update-use...
So now I've set all to Selected Photos and will just click manage and add extra photos when I need them. So much easier than I had thought, thank you!!
And once you have a chat with someone both can share their own contact directly in the chat with 2 clicks and add it with 2 clicks as well.
(which is still rather useless because there is no real benefit from adding someone as contact. But I guess if you want to store number then this is easy)
You're not thinking like a "normie" goal-oriented user, who doesn't care about understanding the system, and for whom the shortest path to achieving their goal generally passes through saying "sure, whatever" to any requests the app makes.
I press "New Message" and get these options: "New Group", "New Contact", "New Channel".
If I press "New Contact" it asks for permission to access my contacts. If I refuse, it goes back to the three options mentioned above.
I've tried to find it for years, and I just have the other person message me first.
Alternatively you can share/click a link with the format t.me/username to skip the search part.
Weird! That option is missing from mine as of about a few weeks ago when doing a normal post. Stories’s picker gives me the option to “Manage”, but no where can I find the option for normal posts as of the last app update. Would you mind sharing a screenshot? I’d love to see if our UIs are different in some way. My contact info is in my profile here if you prefer to share privately.
Where I originally found it was in the messaging feature of IG.