Questions tagged [sms]
Short message (or messaging) service, a system that enables cellular phone users to send and receive text messages.
233
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If only 'two' insecure MFA options are available (email and sms) which is 'most secure'? [duplicate]
Although I disagree with the term MFA entirely if it refers to 'login code send to email', it's a one-time password at best, and likely badly implemented with its associated risks. I do see quite some ...
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Would a spoofed SMS message show up in the same chat history as a legitimate SMS?
I received an odd SMS message from xfinity earlier. The message looks real, and the link they provided is real, but they said I ordered a movie through their service, which I did not. I am wondering ...
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Is ISP sending WiFi password in plain text to phone necessarily a bad sign?
The new router I was given by my internet and phone provider can only be configured via their website. I logged in and went to the page where you can set things like the SSID and password for the WiFi ...
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1
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403
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SMS spoofing in the US
Long story short(ish), I have a friend who's been in a relationship with this girl for a while. When they started she had just moved across country and was in something open with some other dude. She ...
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Is it possible to trace a virtual number back to its service provider? [duplicate]
If a virtual number is only used to send and recieve messages, is it possible for somebody who know the number to trace it back to its service provider and somehow seize the number? (perhaps buying ...
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Every time I log into Facebook, the SMS based 2FA code appears to get intercepted (UK)
Historically, whenever I logged in I got a standard looking text from "Facebook" stating my login code.
As of this morning, when I attempt to log in, I get a fake looking text from a random ...
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115
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I'm receiving text messages that my family didn't send
Lately I've been receiving text messages from family members that they did not send. All 4 family members and I are a part of the SMS group where we send and receive messages related to our family.
...
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I clicked on a SMS spam link. Am I safe? [duplicate]
I received an SMS from an unknown number with a link. Having just ordered stuff from AliExpress bit earlier so, thinking it was related to that, I clicked without doing due diligence. My bad.
I went ...
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How spammers are abusing 2fa SMS in web apps?
My webapp has an SMS 2FA option. When someone enrolls, it sends an SMS to the number specified by the user with hard coded text that contains a token that the user needs to then enter in the web app ...
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Why can't SMS be read online?
I am looking for a technical explanation from a security standpoint why SMS is, seemingly by principle, made impossible to read online whereas it looks it should be easily implemented. I have recently ...
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2
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Is asking users to enrol in SMS 2FA when they already have an authenticator good security practise?
I already have an authenticator for Amazon AWS, and I'm being regularly asked to add an SMS 2FA as well.
If I add SMS MFA, will I become vulnerable to sim-swapping attacks on that MFA?
Same thing with ...
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4
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321
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Why is email 2FA not common?
SMS is a quite common, albeit insecure, 2FA method. Why is email not more common? If someone is using a computer, they almost certainly have an email address, while it is less certain that they have a ...
- 149
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1
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69
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Using another's text number to commit ongoing fraud [duplicate]
Some Vietnamese refugee families have been Bitcoin defrauded by someone using an 805 text number. Lookups say it belongs to a party in Tennessee. I want to know if it is possible that scammers in ...
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2
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Is an attacker living close by able to identify my name and spoof my phone number by intercepting SMS messages?
As I read here and there, it seems like SMS isn't encrypted. Let's say I live in an appartment building. If someone uses a cellular modem to intercept my SMS messages, can they determine my name from ...
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Is SMS a secure authentication method? [duplicate]
I’ve seen many HN comments bashing on SMS being insecure. But WhatsApp and signal both use it as their primary authentication method so it can’t be that bad?
Why is it bad? What attacks are it ...
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Would removing a SIM disable the phone number and block text scams
I have a PAYG basic Nokia mobile, not a smartphone, and have noticed on my EE A/c there is a transaction for a Text Service with a charge of 15p, appearing every so often, which is nothing to do with ...
user278393
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Receiving phishing text messages
I get a phishing messages on SMS every now and then. I'm not sure if it's from anyone that knows me.
What information can I get about the sender of the SMS?
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Doesn't 2FA increase the vulnerability of an account?
You create an account on an online service X with login=your email + password. Compare these 2 situations:
No 2FA enabled. The only risk is if your email is compromised: the "I lost my password&...
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Is a 2fa app really better than SMS 2fa with sim-pin?
A sim-pin safeguards against sim-swapping, which is the primary advantage of using an authenticator app instead of SMS, is this not so?
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How can I use a user's own SMS service to send OTP and make mobile number verification in my Android app?
Goal: I am building a app, i want to verify user's mobile number, the way i am using is when user enters the mobile number, I send OTP to that number and ask user to enter the otp to verify the mobile ...
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238
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Malicious SMS and iMessage Interception
I have an interesting situation on my hands. There are people in my neighborhood that have been harassing me for some time now. It appears that these individuals can are receiving my text (sms) ...
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2
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152
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report bribery: snail mail vs email vs SMS
Say I live in a western country and suspect a foriegn businessperson is trying to bribe local officials. I am provided with 3 options to report: snail mail, email and SMS. For my threat model, I am ...
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44
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Why is SMS OTP not as secure as Authenticator Applications such as Microsoft Authenticator? [duplicate]
Why is SMS OTP not as secure as Authenticator Applications such as Microsoft Authenticator, etc? Is it because of snooping of mobile communications? or?
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214
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Multiple SMS activation codes received by error
For several days now I am receiving activation codes by SMS that look like this:
Your ToYou verification code is 8058
Some are from ToYou, that seems to be a delivery service, others are from similar ...
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132
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A message sent to your phone to erase another message
After giving a new credit card to a client some banks send its PIN code with an SMS. Later they send another SMS that's only purpose is to erase the SMS with the PIN from user's phone. Does this trick ...
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Is there some way to "fully delete" received and sent SMS messages (and any other "deleted" data") on my cellphone?
I have a cheap cellphone bought about ten years ago. It has a physical SIM card. I have in-phone "deleted" all sent and received messages, but very strongly suspect that these are still ...
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3
answers
475
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What to do after opening a potentially malicious link on smartphone?
What must one do if they opened a malicious link?
Warning: Please do not open the links below as they may be malicious. They have been deliberately mangled to prevent accidental opening
I received an ...
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0
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33
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Is verification code a scam? [duplicate]
When facebook sends the confirmation code, the name FACEBOOK is not displayed as the sender,, instead phone numbers of different countries. Until now, it was only on my notebook, but today I synced my ...
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1
answer
849
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Google Voice vs SMS for two-factor authentication
I'm trying to set up two-factor authentication for all my accounts. Some of them, unfortunately, only support SMS.
In that case, which of these options would be more secure?
SMS
Google Voice (which ...
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12
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3
answers
4k
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If we fixed SIM jacking would SMS then become a valid way to send an MFA token to?
And if not would like specific reasons why.
I have this suspicion that, although an inferior method these days to MFA applications, believe that the security is adequate enough as most phone companies ...
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3k
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If I receive Google verification codes that do not work, is my phone compromised? [duplicate]
I know that something similar has happened to other people before (see for instance here or here), but the situation and the question are slightly different.
I wanted to log in to my Gmail account ...
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2
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179
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How much is it hard to implement a mechanism to encrypt SMSs in transit
Why service providers didn't implement something like SSL to make SMS more secure and reliable in multiple scenarios ?
I did ask a question about why SMS is used as a way of verification while it is ...
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88
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7
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Why is SMS used as a way of verifying a user's mobile, when it is not even encrypted in transit?
I did some research about how secure and private SMS messages are.
Providers and governments can see these SMS messages in plaintext,
but what is weird is that these messages are not encrypted in ...
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1
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127
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Cell Phone texting [closed]
Is it possible for someone to redirect text messages to you from another’s phone? Something weird is going on…over the last few weeks I have received “wrong number”text messages from people with ...
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3
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What's stronger: phone/text 2FA or authenticator app? [duplicate]
I noticed some very advanced sites don't offer 2 factor authentication via phone/text. Example Salesforce's Heroku:
Is phone/text based 2 Factor Authentication generally weaker than using an ...
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424
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Received a strange text message. What is it? [closed]
This morning I received the following text message from a Gmail account:
v3s5f3rs4f3gs3.nf5j4k8j4k3o.solar?G$1?V&?KL?O=$HO?&S?K0?$1T
A couple of my friends got it too. I have an iPhone and it ...
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481
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Facebook and Yahoo 2FA SMS codes from odd numbers [duplicate]
When logging in to Facebook/Yahoo mail, I receive my 2FA codes from random numbers. Here are some examples (I have a Romanian phone number, hence the country codes):
+40 747 691 103
+40 727 347 814
+...
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0
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488
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What is "JavaGhost - Mass Twilio Checker"?
Over the past week, the account credentials for my organization's Twilio account were stolen and used to send ~10,000 fraudulent SMS messages claiming to be from a major bank.
The passwords have all ...
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1
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130
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How to decrease the fraud level on SMS verification
To prevent fraud, we require the users to link their account to a mobile phone number. We send a code by SMS.
Fraudsters use hacked social networks to convince "friends" to send them the ...
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201
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2FA with blower.io SMS
I'm currently planning to deploy a project on Heroku and was wondering if it is safe to send 2FA sms messages with the blower.io heroku addon?
Also is it safe/ok to send a short lived authentication ...
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2
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123
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I have a custom domain for email. Do I need to configure DNS to prevent outgoing text messages with an address from my domain? [duplicate]
I own a custom domain that I use for e-mail. The mail server is configured with a catch-all that redirects messages to any user to my inbox. For the first time this afternoon, I received a benign &...
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129
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Spoof texting a regiatered number to yourself and relying....having a conversation [closed]
I feel like I am going crazy. A friend was at my house and received text messages from a number from a person i know. She had a conversation with this number for basically a week. She is now saying ...
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219
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Received Google 2FA Code via SMS from two unknown phone numbers [duplicate]
I recently encountered a strange incident regarding the 2FA of my Google Account.
The user Dunois has described a very similar occurrence in this post: Functional Google 2FA code (via SMS) received ...
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0
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85
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Can OTP (One-Time password) be used to protect data after intrusion has been detected? [closed]
I am working on Social Engineering attacks happening via SMSs. Let's assume a person receives an SMS asking him to click on a malicious link. If a virus is installed on the person's device, how can ...
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2
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331
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Someone uses my service to spam people with sms. How to deal with this?
Every time when user wants to login to my service it sends one time password (OTP) to the user's phone number, then this OTP is used to confirm login.
Someone uses my service to bombard people with ...
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2
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How to spoof IMEI/SIM location?
Once you plug it into a phone and power it on, the IMEI number of the
phone and the SIM's serial number will be transmitted to the nearest
cell tower(s).
source
Is there a way to spoof the location ...
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103
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Which practices should i use while generating SMS codes for auth on my project?
Let's imagine that we have an SMS verification auth, and using random 4-digit codes,
i.e. 1234, 5925, 1342 and etc.
I'm using this random inclusive algorithm on my node.js server:
function ...
3
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1
answer
284
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Is phone number verifications with SMS magic HTTP links less secure than OTP?
I want to verify phone number ownership with specially crafted and encrypted payload within an HTTP hyperlink callback through SMS as opposed to sending an SMS OTP code and writing it back in server ...
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2
answers
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If you SMS text someone, how much more information will they know about you?
If I send someone a text, how much information am I giving up? Could they add me to an app like Whatsapp and access my name and profile? Or does their number first have to be saved in my phone ...
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6
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Is revealing the phone number during OTP verification process considered a vulnerability?
One of the common way of implementing 2FA is using phone number Text message or Call with OTP. As I can see, usually web services show something like:
OTP was sent to the number +*********34
Is it ...
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