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Comment by crackercrews | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

Will this SMS work for account verification?

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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!

I'd be very interested to know if they work for SMS-only applications. I guess it's only $5 to try and find out. If anyone has tried, please report back!

When I look up my Google Voice number, it shows up as VoIP (not quite landline) with the carrier being Grand Central - SVR. It seems likely that Mozilla's service will similarly show up as VoIP. Some places are filtering VoIP numbers from their SMS verification schemes, but most places will let you sign up for promotional texts from a VoIP number.

What about account verification for Twitter/etc.?

Where can you "look up" your number?

There was something recently around a game which was able to detect if a user's phone number was on a prepaid or postpaid plan. I had no idea carriers share this information with others.

https://www.freecarrierlookup.com

It doesn't say anything about if a number is postpaid or prepaid.

google voice numbers are identified as the voip number they are (bandwidth dot com etc) and virtually nothing takes them for identification

>Very likely that Mozilla's report as landline.

I doubt it. It looks like they're using twilio under the hood, and those are most definitely detected as VOIP numbers.

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