Comment by tbrownaw
5 months ago
There's no such thing as (completely) "prevent", just substantially reduce by making it more expensive.
5 months ago
There's no such thing as (completely) "prevent", just substantially reduce by making it more expensive.
Which makes me wonder how much these guys spent per phone number. If you figure you can use a phone number maybe 2 or 3 times per service before it gets blocked they could create literally millions of accounts with this operation across various services. I don't know what the black market value for a Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, HN, etc... account is, but I suspect it is more than the price of a SIM card.
The SIMs pictured in the article are from a carrier called MobileX so that’s the first clue to finding that out. Looks like a couple bucks is enough to get started, but a dealer on the take may have more attractive options and the ability to activate a lot of SIMs without the fuss of signing up accounts with email for each one.
About a $1 for a Gmail, IG etc these days.
I've used this before when I need to create an IG for a work project without wanting to link it to a personal number:
https://www.textverified.com/verifications