I have little doubt that this is a response to the SIMCartel story and I fear that whatever new requirements @SMSPool has, it will likely expand to more services.
For reference, I checked what content is actually displayed to users.
As shown in the screenshot, it prompts users to register on the whitelist and asks for their name, email address, and purpose of use. This screen did not appear when selecting several other major services besides WhatsApp.
Well that’s quite the shame honestly
I don’t mind giving email, reasons but full name is a whole different story
@SMSPool would abbreviation or shortened names eg. G S or Geo Smi or (Public Persona like me) Pseudonym + Letter be ok since we’re privacy conscious or is it possible you guys remove the information immediately after you verified the legitimacy so it is comfortable to give real names that way?
I don’t even understand why they ask for your email in order to be whitelisted when SMSPool already has your email. You need an email to create an account. So why ask for it again when it’s information they already have?
Does this mean they will block aliases if you used one as your account email?
Also, why ask for our name? Especially if the name can be easily faked? And if it can’t, it means they may ask for ID.
All this is very alarming.
If any one notices new services added to the high risk list, please report it here.
how is this actually going to work in practice? how the hell are they going to differentiate between fake aliases/emails without enforcing more stringent KYC? what’s stopping me from using a name like “John Smith” (not that obvious of course) and an email address from some random no-name provider?
odds are they’re going to enforce a whitelist and only allow addresses from gmail, proton, yahoo or whatever the fuck, at which point why continue to use the service at all when there are a plethora of other phone verification providers that do not partake in security theater. i hope their business suffers and that they lose their lead in the market.
most concerning part about this move is that whatsapp is probably only the start and other “high-risk” platforms such as telegram are next, of course i’m just speculating though.
It’s annoying, but it won’t stop anything and you can easily bypass it. I can just use a fake name and last name. I think it’s just to show compliance. They’re not offshore like some SMS providers, so they have to be careful.
I still love SMSPool though, at least it’s only for WhatsApp. Hopefully this doesn’t come for other services in the future.
We will not ask for our users’ IDs; instead, we will simply decline applications. Users can then re-apply at any time. Our staff members are also unable to view the username or account that submitted the application.
These measures were unfortunately a necessary decision. Our suppliers wanted full KYC (ID verification), but we managed to persuade them otherwise. If we hadn’t implemented these measures, we would have lost 80% of our business as our supplier wouldn’t work with us.
Currently, this policy is only applicable to WhatsApp. We will not block alias emails nor require an email address on sign-up, but we do ask for an email address for the application. You can use an email alias if you wish, as we do not block any email providers. You can still register on SMSPool anonymously using our Anonymous account feature.
perhaps my original response was a bit harsh but i still find it troubling this information is collected in the first place, not for people like me who will easily circumvent said measures but for those who lack the technical expertise to know why they should. that being said it sucks your provider forced you to do this, if it were me i’d switch to a different one but then again i do not understand the nuances of your business.
