I like what Mozilla has been doing with their services, but they have built a very confusing business model of many micro services that I just don't see a ton of people signing up for as independent subscriptions.
Why not bundle them all as one membership? Pocket, Mozilla VPN, Relay, Monitor, and whatever services they can scrape up premium options and features for to give them value?
Maybe you use it as part of a multi-layered approach to personal digital privacy.
Without having hired a lawyer to dissect the TOS and Privacy Policy for Mozilla's new service here, I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that they will not sell the data to brokers. If that is true, then it's one more way to try and keep your true PII out of circulation. For instance, maybe you pair this with a high quality VPN offering, browser plugins or whole-network based stuff like pi-hole/etc along with also using aliased credit card numbers through services like Privacy.com or other similar offerings. Then when you "sign up for an account" or "make online purchase" you could use name like John Smith, private/aliased email, etc etc... This just puts distance between your activity and your true identity.
With all that setup you have at least _some_ chance of evading a decent amount of the persistent and invasive tracking that is beginning to be top of mind for many people.
Yeah, I'm a little confused on the use case for this. I guess I could put all of the annoying services that demand a phone number for totally-only-security purposes-trust-us into a "bucket" number. It doesn't sound like it is a feature but I'd prefer that calls and texts to that number just be outright ignored unless I've turned the number on temporarily for verification. But since they have started rejecting VOIP numbers for verification, and now even prepaid phone numbers (!) for verification I feel like this probably won't work for that either.
I personally only use prepaid cards so a service that makes them appear like post paid might be useful on its own though.
The fact that you only get one number and you can't change is seems to blunt some of the utility. Ideally you'd want a separate number for each service and to have them all turned off, to block identifying you as the same user of different services. Not quite as easy to do with finite numbers as with email address suffixes.
I wonder if you could use this like 5sim or other shady text verification services by just remaking a monthly account. I suspect that is not the idea here and probably forbidden, otherwise they'd let you change numbers.
> If you find yourself receiving too many unwanted spam calls or texts, you can easily turn it off for all phone numbers or select the specific ones you want to block.
So it sounds like if your aliased phone number has issues, you can block those specific ones. In theory, you can do that now from your phone, for individual numbers, but it isn't applied if you switch devices. So it's a very moderate improvement.
Additionally, your existing phone number is probably already overwhelmingly accessible to robo-callers, i.e. the cat is already out of the bag.
This is definitely just the first step; we've got lots of ideas for additional protections we could add, and are monitoring usage and feedback [1] to inform our roadmap.
What this first version gives you is a way to add a tier of trust to your phone number: your Relay number for untrustworthy partners, and your true phone number for important things. That means that data leaks of untrustworthy services can no longer be linked to the important ones through your phone number. Additionally, if you receive a phishing call to your Relay number, that's an extra red flag that it might not be who they say it is.
I effectively did this with Google Voice back when.
I would give marketers my Google voice number, it had better interface (and on cloud instead on device) contact management. I could send non favorites to a voice identification prompt (voiding all slow recordings or agents making multi calls that have a pickup delay) and for the final small percentage voice transcripts that I could determine if important.
Or for craigslist, I could forward calls to a phone for a short period of time, then turn off forwarding.
I think the idea is to give your real email and phone number to real friends and family; then you use the relayed one with online services who might sell or lose the data. Then you could presumably ditch the related info after the spam gets to be too much? Or maybe you just do it to be more anonymous?
Totally agree, this should be a telephone version of a spam folder. I have a legacy google voice plan that I use for this, but would be happy to pay a couple bucks a month to Mozilla for a comparable service.
If y'all are interested in something like this, let me know. I wrote a service exactly like this [0] and it sort of flopped because the marketing plan was bad and I struggled to crack my (poorly chosen) target market of 'privacyfreaks'.
If you want to re-co-found with me on marketing / sales, hit me up: maddie+hn[at]qnzl.co. I tried some pivots, sucked at marketing it, I occasionally get asked about where it went.
---
If anyone wants to run their own instance using Twilio, I open-sourced the basic structure of my previous service [1] so it should be fairly plug-and-play to do this cheaper ($1 per number + small usage fee) and for more numbers.
My caveat about this is some services will silently ignore you if you try to use a virtual number. It's more useful for IRL where you don't want to throw your real number around much.
ya that's useful. I do like this service. I have noticed more and more that people are asking for phone numbers for app registration and even in person I have seen this. A phone number to me is private and personal.
The firefox service is priced well but 75 texts and 50 minutes of voice is fairly limited. The burner phone services that exist are too sketchy and too expensive for my taste.
I don't like marketing or sales but if you could market yourself as a privacy focused, Free/Libre solution that wasn't a sketchy fly by night operation and offered more than a closed source phone app I would subscribe.
Twilio itself seems to be oriented towards businesses and not individuals which is why I did not sign up with them.
"Since 2013, Hushed has offered consumers affordable private phone number solutions with fully equipped talk and text capabilities. With an expansive selection of phone numbers from over 300 area codes in the US, Canada, and UK, our goal is to provide a secure telecommunication experience for users around the world. Hushed offers mobile and local phone numbers from a variety of countries and area codes. We pride ourselves on the high-quality service we offer all our customers, and we believe that protecting your privacy is of the utmost importance."
Maybe this is a good place to ask: I'm a British expat living in the USA, and for a while now I've wanted a service which provides a British phone number, and forwards calls and texts to my US number, while also allowing me to send texts and make calls "from" the UK number if I want to.
It looks like I might be able to do this with Twilio, but I'm not a developer, and quickly got frustrated trying to build what I wanted.
Is there a service that will do this for me at a reasonable price?
Check out Andrews & Arnold. They provide real 07 numbers that aren't classified as VoIP by most providers, so they will actually work fine for most online services too.
(my company resells these with some add-on services on top, but for your use-case you're better off just going to the source directly)
I think TextNow offers a better solution and I've been using it to do this for quite some time and it doesn't require any kind of forwarding. I can send/receive calls and messages directly from within its app and recycle numbers at any time - all for free (ad supported). Calls are of great quality too and it even includes voicemail. If I really like a number and want to lock it (to also receive 2FA codes), it's a yearly $7 fee. Works with area codes in US and Canada.
I think there are other options like Fongo and probably a dozen other similar services that already have been doing this for some time. Not really seeing the value proposition of going with the Mozilla option here. Am I missing something?
I silently miss so many incoming calls with TextNow and from reviews it seems I'm not the only one, but I don't really know another option for a Canadian number.
> Each month you will receive up to 50 minutes for incoming calls and 75 text messages. All phone number masking plans will include unlimited email masking. The cost is $3.99 a month for an annual plan or $4.99 a month for a monthly plan.
So you pay $4-5 per month and you're still limited? I was expecting there would be some free amount and after that it's paid.
Google Voice numbers are reported as landlines, there seems to be some way to verify that a number is actually mobile. Very likely that Mozilla's report as landline. Banks (capital one) have definitely balked at my google voice number.
What these burner numbers are great for are rewards programs. I sign up for every one I can with my GV number!
> Next, you will be prompted to verify your true phone number where the calls and texts will be forwarded to via text message. After verification, we will generate your phone number mask.
Doesn't feel necessary to me really. I've never ever been in the need for an incoming call, just for sms. And I'd much rather have them sent to an email rather than my actual phone too (and then I wouldn't need to share my phone number with this service either). That would be a real use-case for me. But paying a monthly subscription for that twice a year sms isn't that great either.
I currently have a pre-paid sim and an old phone for this usecase. It kind of sucks and I don't have access to it when I'm not home (sure, there are ways to sync this but haven't felt a big enough need for it yet).
This looks nice. I'm currently using Tutanota and love it. Seems like it would be possible to connect this with Firefox Relay, digging into it a bit more!
Spam calls are not the reason it is bad to give your number out; it isn’t related to calls at all.
Your number is your permanent cross-app, cross-company tracking identifier. It is a lookup key for your name, address, income bracket, email, spam history, etc.
This is why so many apps require it during signup.
> this feature is available in the U.S. and Canada
Bummer. Before reading this, I was so excited, since robocalls and sketchy SMS messages with malware payloads have plagued my phone for years, and now it's not available to me (I'm in the EU).
Just set up an email service and everything and start offering similiarities to Google's web ecosystem already. Mozilla doesn't need to worry about devices or a cloud division, or even a search engine (yet? Brave has one).
The slower they are to realize they need to do all that to stay relevant, the faster Firefox's market share shrinks
It would be great if someone could package several virtual services into one app. Virtual cc number, virtual email address, virtual phone number all with one click. That way I can sign up for some in-store membership with working info, get the discount, and never worry about my info being compromised.
I use Fastmail for what they call Masked Email, and Privacy.com for unique debit cards for shopping online. They both integrate with 1Password. So when I sign up for a new account, 1Password generates a Masked Email, a random password, and a unique debit card, and saves it all, and I LOVE IT!
This service seems interesting for people who are establishing net new phone numbers, but for those of us who have existing numbers they've been using, the barn door is already open. This wouldn't get us off existing lists.
They could still so easily regain much of their lost trust by sincerely apologising for their cock-ups (dodgy studies/data-collection, addons-fiasco, etc) and their political shilling; and yet, they do not.
The sewage they keep pumping out on their blog, and spaffing money on expensive rebrands, is turning-off the users who keep Mozilla alive.
Given how much they're doing for Google's market-share with this blatant self-sabotage, you'd be forgiven for thinking Mozilla is being run by Google.
Is someone at Mozilla willing to share some technical details about how this is implemented under the covers? The main thing I’m curious about is:
Can the ability to have multiple relay numbers tied to 1 real number be added relatively easily by scaling your technical architecture, or is there some non-marginal underlying cost to each additional relay number that would make such a feature too expensive to support at this price point?
As I understand it there's a cost to every number, which is why we're limiting it to just one number at the moment. (Though we'd definitely have loved to implement it the same way we do email masks; if we do find a way to cost-effectively do so, I'm sure we will.)
This is cool. I've recently been thinking about getting a "burner" number for sharing outside my immediate circle.
Same for email - the idea would be to have a phone/email for public consumption and then a separate address and number for my inner circle of family/friends.
Not worth it. I have a Google Voice number (free, easy, good UX). Now it’s a constant juggle of “which number did I give”. Especially since you presumably have already given away your current number. Even if you go all-in on burner number, there’s a question of longevity and risk. Do you give it to government? Do you give it to banks? Etc
Same. Though for email there are good services like Fastmail (and likely many others) which already offer this and other benefits for a nominal subscription fee.
I haven't implemented this idea yet, but what stops us from just buying Twilio credits, getting a number through them and then writing a bit of glue code to their API to pull down SMS messages (for things like 2-factor codes, etc) and route them wherever we find personally convenient? Maybe Twilio is also selling our customer data paired with these numbers to data brokers, though, IDK. It's just a fleeting idea I've had.
[+] [-] imagetic|3 years ago|reply
Why not bundle them all as one membership? Pocket, Mozilla VPN, Relay, Monitor, and whatever services they can scrape up premium options and features for to give them value?
[+] [-] groovecoder|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denton-scratch|3 years ago|reply
That would be cool; then I could unsubscribe from all of them with a single action.
Why is this branded "Firefox"? This is apparently a Mozilla project, unrelated to their web browser.
[+] [-] bretbernhoft|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arrosenberg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaclaz|3 years ago|reply
Now:
1) You give your real number to someone.
2) Somehow your real number goes into a list used by robo-callers.
3) A robo-call arrives on your real number, disturbing your peace.
After:
0) You give Mozilla 3.99 or 4.99 US$/month
1) You give your Mozilla number to someone.
2) Somehow your Mozilla number goes into a list used by robo-callers.
3) A robo-call arrives on your Mozilla number, that promptly relays it to your real number, disturbing your peace.
You cannot change your Mozilla number, so it is basically an "alias" number, where is the advantage?
Stopping paying so that the number becomes invalid?
But then you won't be reachable anymore by the people you gave that number to.
[+] [-] nicholasjarnold|3 years ago|reply
Without having hired a lawyer to dissect the TOS and Privacy Policy for Mozilla's new service here, I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that they will not sell the data to brokers. If that is true, then it's one more way to try and keep your true PII out of circulation. For instance, maybe you pair this with a high quality VPN offering, browser plugins or whole-network based stuff like pi-hole/etc along with also using aliased credit card numbers through services like Privacy.com or other similar offerings. Then when you "sign up for an account" or "make online purchase" you could use name like John Smith, private/aliased email, etc etc... This just puts distance between your activity and your true identity.
With all that setup you have at least _some_ chance of evading a decent amount of the persistent and invasive tracking that is beginning to be top of mind for many people.
[+] [-] ridgered4|3 years ago|reply
I personally only use prepaid cards so a service that makes them appear like post paid might be useful on its own though.
The fact that you only get one number and you can't change is seems to blunt some of the utility. Ideally you'd want a separate number for each service and to have them all turned off, to block identifying you as the same user of different services. Not quite as easy to do with finite numbers as with email address suffixes.
I wonder if you could use this like 5sim or other shady text verification services by just remaking a monthly account. I suspect that is not the idea here and probably forbidden, otherwise they'd let you change numbers.
[+] [-] neogodless|3 years ago|reply
> If you find yourself receiving too many unwanted spam calls or texts, you can easily turn it off for all phone numbers or select the specific ones you want to block.
So it sounds like if your aliased phone number has issues, you can block those specific ones. In theory, you can do that now from your phone, for individual numbers, but it isn't applied if you switch devices. So it's a very moderate improvement.
Additionally, your existing phone number is probably already overwhelmingly accessible to robo-callers, i.e. the cat is already out of the bag.
[+] [-] Vinnl|3 years ago|reply
This is definitely just the first step; we've got lots of ideas for additional protections we could add, and are monitoring usage and feedback [1] to inform our roadmap.
What this first version gives you is a way to add a tier of trust to your phone number: your Relay number for untrustworthy partners, and your true phone number for important things. That means that data leaks of untrustworthy services can no longer be linked to the important ones through your phone number. Additionally, if you receive a phishing call to your Relay number, that's an extra red flag that it might not be who they say it is.
But again, there is more to come, so stay tuned.
[1] See also https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/firefox-relay-pho...
[+] [-] smileysteve|3 years ago|reply
I would give marketers my Google voice number, it had better interface (and on cloud instead on device) contact management. I could send non favorites to a voice identification prompt (voiding all slow recordings or agents making multi calls that have a pickup delay) and for the final small percentage voice transcripts that I could determine if important.
Or for craigslist, I could forward calls to a phone for a short period of time, then turn off forwarding.
[+] [-] barbariangrunge|3 years ago|reply
It’s like the concept of a “burner phone” I think
[+] [-] lalopalota|3 years ago|reply
I can already do that on my phone, and it is kind of useless due to caller-id spoofing that most robocallers use.
Also, probably wont work for services that require a phone number but don't accept VOIP numbers.
I wish the article addressed these issues.
[+] [-] balderdash|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] janalsncm|3 years ago|reply
With a virtual cc number, I create a new number on demand for each service I need, and disable it after I don’t need it anymore.
With virtual email addresses, I create a virtual address and delete it after I don’t need it anymore.
Unless there is a phone number analog, a single number is only useful until that number is compromised. Which could be day 1.
[+] [-] madamelic|3 years ago|reply
If you want to re-co-found with me on marketing / sales, hit me up: maddie+hn[at]qnzl.co. I tried some pivots, sucked at marketing it, I occasionally get asked about where it went.
---
If anyone wants to run their own instance using Twilio, I open-sourced the basic structure of my previous service [1] so it should be fairly plug-and-play to do this cheaper ($1 per number + small usage fee) and for more numbers.
My caveat about this is some services will silently ignore you if you try to use a virtual number. It's more useful for IRL where you don't want to throw your real number around much.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18311146
[1]: https://github.com/qnzl/twilio-basic-server
[+] [-] onetimeusename|3 years ago|reply
The firefox service is priced well but 75 texts and 50 minutes of voice is fairly limited. The burner phone services that exist are too sketchy and too expensive for my taste.
I don't like marketing or sales but if you could market yourself as a privacy focused, Free/Libre solution that wasn't a sketchy fly by night operation and offered more than a closed source phone app I would subscribe.
Twilio itself seems to be oriented towards businesses and not individuals which is why I did not sign up with them.
[+] [-] bpye|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacooper|3 years ago|reply
Will stick with Simplelogin.io, which is included for free with Proton Unlimited.
1: https://github.com/mozilla/fx-private-relay/issues/1639
[+] [-] Terretta|3 years ago|reply
https://hushed.com/
"Since 2013, Hushed has offered consumers affordable private phone number solutions with fully equipped talk and text capabilities. With an expansive selection of phone numbers from over 300 area codes in the US, Canada, and UK, our goal is to provide a secure telecommunication experience for users around the world. Hushed offers mobile and local phone numbers from a variety of countries and area codes. We pride ourselves on the high-quality service we offer all our customers, and we believe that protecting your privacy is of the utmost importance."
// not affiliated
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|3 years ago|reply
It looks like I might be able to do this with Twilio, but I'm not a developer, and quickly got frustrated trying to build what I wanted.
Is there a service that will do this for me at a reasonable price?
[+] [-] MatthewMcDonald|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nextgrid|3 years ago|reply
(my company resells these with some add-on services on top, but for your use-case you're better off just going to the source directly)
[+] [-] bj-rn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaik|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srhngpr|3 years ago|reply
I think there are other options like Fongo and probably a dozen other similar services that already have been doing this for some time. Not really seeing the value proposition of going with the Mozilla option here. Am I missing something?
[+] [-] pigeons|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsync|3 years ago|reply
https://kozubik.com/items/2famule/
[+] [-] jaclaz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crackercrews|3 years ago|reply
So you pay $4-5 per month and you're still limited? I was expecting there would be some free amount and after that it's paid.
Will this SMS work for account verification?
[+] [-] kylehotchkiss|3 years ago|reply
What these burner numbers are great for are rewards programs. I sign up for every one I can with my GV number!
[+] [-] tjoff|3 years ago|reply
Doesn't feel necessary to me really. I've never ever been in the need for an incoming call, just for sms. And I'd much rather have them sent to an email rather than my actual phone too (and then I wouldn't need to share my phone number with this service either). That would be a real use-case for me. But paying a monthly subscription for that twice a year sms isn't that great either.
I currently have a pre-paid sim and an old phone for this usecase. It kind of sucks and I don't have access to it when I'm not home (sure, there are ways to sync this but haven't felt a big enough need for it yet).
[+] [-] grammers|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|3 years ago|reply
Your number is your permanent cross-app, cross-company tracking identifier. It is a lookup key for your name, address, income bracket, email, spam history, etc.
This is why so many apps require it during signup.
[+] [-] vmoore|3 years ago|reply
Bummer. Before reading this, I was so excited, since robocalls and sketchy SMS messages with malware payloads have plagued my phone for years, and now it's not available to me (I'm in the EU).
[+] [-] ronnocoep|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anotherrandom|3 years ago|reply
The slower they are to realize they need to do all that to stay relevant, the faster Firefox's market share shrinks
[+] [-] janalsncm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] auslegung|3 years ago|reply
Fastmail referral url: https://ref.fm/u26310488
Privacy.com referral url: https://privacy.com/join/JCPFN
[+] [-] cmcconomy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasec57322|3 years ago|reply
They could still so easily regain much of their lost trust by sincerely apologising for their cock-ups (dodgy studies/data-collection, addons-fiasco, etc) and their political shilling; and yet, they do not.
The sewage they keep pumping out on their blog, and spaffing money on expensive rebrands, is turning-off the users who keep Mozilla alive.
Given how much they're doing for Google's market-share with this blatant self-sabotage, you'd be forgiven for thinking Mozilla is being run by Google.
[+] [-] prng2021|3 years ago|reply
Can the ability to have multiple relay numbers tied to 1 real number be added relatively easily by scaling your technical architecture, or is there some non-marginal underlying cost to each additional relay number that would make such a feature too expensive to support at this price point?
[+] [-] Vinnl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tailspin2019|3 years ago|reply
Same for email - the idea would be to have a phone/email for public consumption and then a separate address and number for my inner circle of family/friends.
[+] [-] vineyardmike|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicholasjarnold|3 years ago|reply
I haven't implemented this idea yet, but what stops us from just buying Twilio credits, getting a number through them and then writing a bit of glue code to their API to pull down SMS messages (for things like 2-factor codes, etc) and route them wherever we find personally convenient? Maybe Twilio is also selling our customer data paired with these numbers to data brokers, though, IDK. It's just a fleeting idea I've had.
[+] [-] srhngpr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] returnInfinity|3 years ago|reply
Also LinkedIn will give away your contact details.
Your Bank or any service important to you may get hacked and your phone number leaked.