
Top Sites to Receive SMS Online Without a Phone - spaceboy
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/top-10-sites-receive-sms-online-without-phone/
======
jstanley
(Shameless plug coming up)

Not listed in the article: I run
[https://smsprivacy.org/](https://smsprivacy.org/)

We don't require any identifying information for signup (not even an email
address). We take payment in Bitcoin.

We have cheap virtual numbers available where our upstream provider blocks
signup verification codes, and more expensive "physical numbers" available to
receive verification codes.

Featured on Indie Hackers here: [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sms-
privacy](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sms-privacy)

Revenue has now grown to nearly $1200/mo.

Ask me Anything!

~~~
freakz
Give me a way to top up my balance with physical gift cards (Starbucks, Subway
etc.), pretty please?

~~~
jstanley
I have no plans to accept payment in anything other than Bitcoin, but can you
please explain the advantage of paying for services with other companies' gift
cards?

And how would it even work? Would you post the gift cards to the company, and
then they'd add to your balance when they receive them?

How is it better for either the customer or the business, compared to Bitcoin?

Plus I hardly spend any money in either Starbucks or Subway, so I'd then
presumably need to find someone to sell them on to.

Surely it would be easier for both parties if you posted physical cash than
physical gift cards (customer doesn't need to buy the gift cards, and business
doesn't need to sell them).

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smcl
Btw if you have a Thinkpad X250 or other laptop based on a Sierra em73xx modem
I wrote a python library to send/receive SMS using that:
[https://github.com/smcl/py-em73xx](https://github.com/smcl/py-em73xx)

~~~
smcl
Oops maybe I should remember to check before sharing things like this - I
forgot that I have "(TODO, haha!)" in the "Documentation" section of the
README. Check the Examples section for how this should work. It's very simple,
but admittedly my docs should be better.

You can also pick it up from pypi:
[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/em73xx](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/em73xx)

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dorianm
> Ironically, Twilio gives you a private phone number for free in the trial
> account if you provide them with your phone number to receive a verification
> code. Fortunately you can use any of the temporary phone numbers from the
> sites above to receive the verification code to activate Twilio trial
> account.

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wfunction
While we're on the topic, could someone explain the following?

1\. Is there any free way to send an SMS "from" a different phone number that
you verifiably own, without actually sending it from that number? (e.g. if
your service provider charges you for messages sent through them, but the
phone number is yours)

2\. Beyond that... how do VoIP services go about sending & receiving SMSs
themselves? Why can't I do the same thing and bypass them?

~~~
jstanley
My admittedly very limited understanding is that it works basically the same
as the Internet.

Anybody who wants to be a serious player needs to have sufficient peering
agreements that they can route traffic to every other player.

So yes you could do it yourself, the same as you could setup your own ISP.
It's just easier and cheaper not to.

~~~
wfunction
Do traditional lines work the same way basically too, in this respect? Or is
there a fundamental difference between traditional lines and VoIP lines in
this aspect?

~~~
jstanley
I would assume so, although traditional lines were a lot more nationalised. So
it would be the same thing, but (international) agreements between national
carries rather than private companies.

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kmfrk
YouTube's authentication system is extremely annoying; you can't attach your
phone number to more than two accounts.

Does anyone know if you can select a Twilio trial number from a different
country than your own?

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Mathnerd314
Doesn't even mention Google Voice? Site author in Malaysia?

Maybe it's useful information for someone, but it seems more like an SEO
content trap than a blog.

~~~
seszett
> _Doesn 't even mention Google Voice?_

Well, you need a phone number to sign up for a Google account, so Google Voice
isn't an option if you don't already have a phone.

~~~
manarth

      isn't an option if you don't already have a phone
    

Despite the article's headline, I believe their use-case if for people who
have a phone, but don't wish to give their real phone number to any arbitrary
website, hence the comparison in the intro with temporary email addresses, and
the line _" If for some reason you need to receive text messages online from
your computer rather than your phone"_.

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bigiain
<evil hat>What an awesome way to collect SMS 2FA tokens. Plug this into a
database of password breaches (an evil version of Have I Been Pwned that
stores hashes and passwords, for example) and as soon as you see token-
looking-things, hit Paypal/banksites/Amazon with any reversed passwords you
have and try the token...

~~~
kingbirdy
Someone would have to be pretty dumb to go to the trouble of setting up 2FA,
but using a publicly readable text service instead of their phone

~~~
some1else
I checked the article to see if I could do exactly that. Why couldn't the
second factor be another web service? Password resets shouldn't be possible
with the second factor alone anyway. What's the use-case for a publicly
readable text service? I'm not familiar with any such services.

~~~
patio11
_What 's the use-case for a publicly readable text service?_

Abuse, for one -- many services use "prove you control a phone number" as a
first-pass filter for "An action which is easy to do once but hard to do
100,000 times" to authorize people to do a wide variety of things.

~~~
some1else
Apologies. I'm not a native English speaker. Still having a problem imagining
in what sense an SMS service might be "publicly available", and how public
availability helps in proving control of a phone number :-$

~~~
bigbugbag
Have you visited one ?
[https://smsreceivefree.com/](https://smsreceivefree.com/) for example. you
will understand what publicly available means: they provide a phone number,
you use it for whatever and check the site page where all text sent to this
number are displayed.

~~~
rebuilder
Well, that was an interesting read. Judging by the received SMS people, for
example, register Whatsapp accounts with those numbers!

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jakobegger
Ohhh, this is wonderful. I'm eternally grateful for whoever runs yopmail.com;
I didn't know that something similar exists for text messages as well!

It sounds like something that should be an open source crowd-sourced service!

It imagine it could work like this:

1) Generous people donate a phone number by putting a cheap prepaid SIM into
an old smartphone with a special app on it.

2) Everyone else can now use this number to receive messages!

3) The service could end up having hundreds of phone numbers available, with
stats (eg. last message received, number of messages received, downtime, etc.)

Just like generous people today run TOR exit nodes, generous people could run
an "SMS entry node". (not sure if that term makes sense)

Disadvantage: like TOR, it can and will be abused by spammers.

Advantage: Companies need to come up with better anti-spam measures instead of
"give us all your personal data".

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camoby
As someone who's sick of giving out my mobile number to sites and services,
does anyone happen to know which of these might work with Skype, if they've
curiously decided to lock you out of your account since they don't have a
mobile number for you?

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nbrempel
I needed something like this a few months back so I whipped up a tool over the
weekend to do this.

Feel free to use it!

[https://sms-scope.com/](https://sms-scope.com/)

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formula_ninguna
is there any way to dynamically create such a number or numbers in my Twillio
account? how many?

