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↩ replying to Derek Ross
my phone number was sold by Verizon and ATT and TMobile in the past, my number was not sold by Google Fi which is an MVNO. I know this because I looked myself up on truepeoplesearch and there are legal cases with these wireless carriers for selling location data and ph numbers. Also fi has strong protection against sim swaps, account secured by security key through Google account. Maybe not as good as cloaked but better than the big 3 in my opinion. I'm looking into cloaked, looks interesting.
↩ replying to Derek Ross
Hi Derek, We operate on the T-Mobile network but they do not have access to or visibility on any of our customer data. The MNO (in this case T-mobile) will still see what towers your device and SIM are connecting to but will not see any of your customer data. Also, the NFT was an attempt introduce the ethereum NFT community to the ability of liquid to accomplish the same (albeit useless) NFT functionality on the Bitcoin blockchain using layer 2 tech. We didn't end up doing it finally because the nuance wrt what we were doing was lost on most (hence your comment). Hope that helps.
↩ replying to jack
I looked into hushed. did not get good vibes re: how safe/legit their set of available numbers might be, but I suspect that's just a shortfall in my understanding of that space. is this just voip in another costume? it would be interesting if a company would truly step up to sell real privacy protection, with "we will protect you, and here's our <resource-backed> promise to pay you if we fail". actively shielding and protecting you, their treasured client, as their paid service, not just a "well, we'll try, but you know the interwebs these days" lame-ass hint-promise... what would I pay for such protection? hard to guess, but that's because it's hard to trust any such unproven biz models? what if there was a "I'll ramp up to pay more as you prove your value" trust-earning subscription model? with a known-up-front fees cap, but also a known rev-growth path to help motivate them to keep their promises? the power of aligned incentives!!! and yeah, as noted before, I'm known to be wildly idealistic... that's why I'm here!
↩ replying to jack
In a nutshell, I would say that our value prop is as follows: 1) Solved SIM swap attacks by only allowing subscribers to modify their accounts and only after they authenticate using proven open source authentication technologies. 2) We accept Bitcoin and were founded by long time privacy advocates (both co-founders worked at Zeroknowledge Systems in 2000 along side Dr Adam Back and other privacy pioneers). 3) We offer multiple non KYC purchase options. Finally, our parent company is working on the Cloaked Network (An open source Bitcoin incentivized decentralized private network that will hopefully replace Tor some day).
It has some people behind it that have been successful in the past, but not at this scope. Imo there's a potential, 5% chance for major success. The fact that its bitcoin adjacent could be a big benefit in terms of getting the word out. The marketing is too good at this point, so that's a red flag in my opinion.
As a pleb, it doesn’t sound that groundbreaking to me and feels a bit deceptive. Lots of carriers now allow you to lock your sim from transfers, and many logins allow you to use an authenticator app rather than phone number. The largest benefit would be if they could maintain privacy, but from the info on their website, it doesn’t seem much better than any other carrier. Even if they don’t collect and store private data, they are no doubt using one of the big wireless carriers network which still has the ability to track every device connected to it. I could be very wrong one either of these points, if so someone please correct me, but as I see it this is just an overpriced cell service with slightly higher sim swap protection.
↩ replying to Student of Life
lastly we have plans for further improvements, eventually pushing all traffic over a full mixnet (both user data traffic and and voice. this will defend against all location tracking. we have some interim hacks but only things that don't actually make you more of a target. hint: swapping imei and imsi repeatedly while in the same location is like trying to be subtle while you've got a full marching band following you
Hi! We're here too. Happy to answer any questions. SIM swaps happen because there are too many people at the various telcos who have the ability to make changes to your account. We restrict this to the user instead of allowing thousands of sales and support staff to do it. The way it works is that we buy wholesale minutes from the carrier and we handle the customer info. They don't see any personal info, just the MSISDN, IMSI and an IMEI. We don't care what you call yourself. Pay with bitcoin or monero and you don't need to give us any real info.
Ελληνικα Ξ³ΞΉΞ± Ξ½Ξ± ΞΌΞ·Ξ½ καταλαβΡι κανΡισ!ΞŸΟ„Ξ±Ξ½ σου Ριχα γραψΡι καποτΡ Ξ½Ξ± στΡιλΡισ τριανταφυλλα στον ΀ραμπ αρκΡτουσ μηνΡσ πριν ΡκλΡγΡι δΡν ΞΌΞ΅ ακουσΡσ,ΞΈΞ± Ριχαν αποκατασταθΡι ΞΏΟ„ σχΡσΡισ σασ,αλλα Ρισαι Ργωιστησ,ΞΈΞ± ΡβλΡπΡ την χΡιρονομια σου ΞΊΞ±ΞΉ τα πραγματα ΞΈΞ± Ριχαν αποκατασταθΡι!Χρονοσ υπαρχΡι Ξ±ΞΊΞΏΞΌΞ± μΡχρι την τΡλΡτη!ΑιξΡ τον Ργωισμο σου ΞΊΞ±ΞΉ ΞΊΞ±Ξ½Ξ΅ την σωστη κινηση!Απο αγαπη στο λΡω!
Im an investor in the company. Worked previously with both founders at two startups. The SMS problem they solve now is real and works well. Also very excited for the work they are pursuing to build a TOR replacement that uses Lightning nodes. This will be a huge benefit to Bitcoin and anonymity / privacy online. The team understands this well as they’ve been doing this for 25yrs.