Show HN: Anonymous texting (my weekend project)

Show HN: Anonymous texting (my weekend project)(txt.gs)

4 points by jerfelix 14 years ago | 5 comments

jerfelix 14 years ago |

This was one of those "it's a 3-day weekend... I wonder if I can build something and learn something."

I decided to cobble something together that permits anonymous texting. It's certainly not perfect, but I thought it was worth showing off to the HN crowd.

$35 for a domain name (sigh, I used godaddy for a Southern Georgia .gs domain; namecheap couldn't help me. Sorry guys). An old server, ubuntu Server edition, Python, Postfix, Sqlite, and little bit of code, a free blogger "website", and it all pretty much works.

What do you think?

PS I'm happy to post a follow-up with all the gory details.

oz 14 years ago | |

Please do; I had something similar in mind some time ago, but never got around to it. Let's hear it.

philiphodgen 14 years ago |

1. Congratulations on the extremely sane privacy policy. Easily understood. Practical.

2. http://txt.gs doesn't resolve.

3. There have been times I wanted to send text messages without exposing my phone number. Benign reasons. This could be a good solution for me. (I carry two phones and want to text someone from the "other" phone which of course I don't have with me and I don't want that person to know the phone number of the phone I have with me.) (So when I say "I carry two phones" I of course mean I constantly forget to carry two phones.)

jerfelix 14 years ago | |

Oh, and on your point #3... Right now, I intentionally do not allow you to initiate a text conversation to a phone number. There are a few issues and challenges with that (particularly in spam prevention, and in having to know the user's carrier).

So in other words, you wouldn't be able to use your second phone and decide on an impulse to send a message to 867-5309.

On the other hand, you could tell the other person to initiate the conversation to you. "Hey, TEXT me at philiph@txt.gs. Yeah, I know it's confusing. Just put the email address in, where you usually put phone numbers."

Then once they texted you, you could text them back numerous times, over weeks or months, until they "/stop" the service.

jerfelix 14 years ago | |

Thanks. I wrote the Terms and Conditions at 4AM when wired on coffee. It's hard to keep them brief and yet explain a little bit of the "why".

Yeah, I'm not sure about http://txt.gs. Google/blogger wouldn't let me point that to their server. And I really don't want to set up a web server just to redirect. Maybe someone here has some ideas.

Thanks for checking it out!