

Show HN: Anonymous texting (my weekend project) - jerfelix
http://www.txt.gs

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

------
philiphodgen
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
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.

