Currently the known way to have a mobile number is to buy SIM card physical chip and insert it into your mobile phone but this causes alot of troubles to privacy/security e.g:
Active SIM cards (inserted into working phone) can track your physical location 24/7.
It can be used as a backdoor to sophisticated malware like pegasus.
Privacy concerns when registering into Signal or Telegram or 2FA… or any service asking to use a real mobile number.
To get these issues fixed is to not use sim card at the first place and get a phone number working through xmpp/jabber network, This service is available by https://jmp.chat/ and you can use xmpp client to communicate and use the number.
I have tested the service and i find it really worthy like the fast registration, you can register with signal,telegram readily after activation (reliable) , active support , you can pay using cryptocurrency.
I would like to add this service to the wiki as a method to register into services which requires mobile number without revealing your identity/real mobile number or as one of the methods to avoid using sim cards or even the need to use a mobile phone.
Yes please. It’s great to see such service here. Can you tell is there an article on wiki about using privacy disasterous services anonymously? It is cool if someone writes it
I think this is the kind of thing I’ve been looking for. Can it be used in Europe? Can it also be used for phone number verification for services such as whatsapp? Currently using WABI for WhatsApp which is Ok just a bit pricey and quite often find numbers don’t work. Thanks for the info looks good
Agree - that would be a very valuable addition. @nurmagoz
It could go here - with screenshots would be a bonus! - as this page is currently being reworked/fixed/improved.
I never understood why Moxie was so resistant to amending Signal so it could just be used easily as a standalone desktop application.
These days the devs spend all their time on bikeshed issues like better emojis etc. instead of addressing the greatest weakness - forcing accounts to be linked to existing mobile devices, which makes it largely useless for anonymous purposes.
So if this issue can consistently be worked around, it would be a big step forward.
Services such as signal have a reason (even if we don’t agree with it) why these services are adamant about phone number verification. There is only a limited amount of services that provide workarounds. By making these workaround more and more popular, the more likely it is felt as an issue from services who are adamant about phone number verification. It pushes them to find ways to blacklist the whole service if that is possible somehow or to use things such as google SafetyNet which can either not be circumvented, no known circumvention methods known to the public or require insecure practices such as rooting the phone with software from dubious origin and so forth.
It’s similar to private Tor bridges. The more people know the IP of a private Tor bridge, the more likely it gets leaked to a censor and added to the blacklist.
If not scalable, robust some things are better kept as hidden gems. Such as, users finding these services by digging deep, reading forums, OK but otherwise I don’t recommend to open the floodgates.
I disagree with the idea that security or privacy-related knowledge should be a) hard to find b) difficult to discern. We live in a global police state, so the people need every tool at their disposal to reclaim their rights.
Also, nowhere near enough traffic here to make a significant impact in the number of Signal users who would bother with this setup out of the many millions who use it IMO.
Ironically, the user above likely learned about this here and wants to benefit from it while preventing its use for others. I was under the impression the mission here was to improve privacy for users, and benefit the userbase. Connectivity/usability via Tor is increasingly under threat. Thank you, @nurmagoz - even if the editorial decision is made to roll this one back.
jmp.chat worked very well for myself and the applications I required. Downside to it that it only supports US or Canada based numbers, I was wondering whether anyone would know such a service for UK/Europe based numbers?
Hi, what happens when we don’t pay? Does the number expire? Do we lose our number forever, or is it possible to get it back after several months? Is the number destroyed or can someone else get it back?
