Unknown programmer sends SMS alerts to those who posted their phone number on Twitter
TheVerge edition communicated with an unknown programmer, who essentially sends SMS spam to users' phones, but is guided by noble promptings. A citizen is forced to conceal his identity, since his actions from the point of view of the law are very doubtful. At the same time, he believes that the frivolity of users who freely publish personal data in the open access of social networks is a pernicious habit and considers it his duty to point it out.
Those Twitter users who had the imprudence to publish a phone number directly in the tape in open access, began to receive on their phones SMS-messages with "interesting facts" about cats. True, the message indicated the ability to unsubscribe from the mailing list. To do this, you had to write a tweet "@Snowden Meow, I <3 catfacts", mentioning in it the account of Edward Snowden, famous for his struggle for the privacy of personal data.
Finding frivolous Twitter users turned out to be easy. For this, the noble programmer wrote only two scripts. One of them analyzed the flow of tweets through the official API of the service and extracted phone numbers from them using regular expression. After that, it remains to turn to a free service for sending SMS messages, which had such a weak CAPTCHA that it was not difficult to cope with its recognition. The choice of the theme for “punitive” SMS is also explained very simply - one of the first tweets by Edward Snowden was devoted to his love for cats.
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It is not known whether the author of the unusual action is associated with Edward Snowden or even is himself, but earlier a funny situation also occurred with the twitter of a former NSA employee. Edward, having barely registered on the microblogging service, forgot to turn off email notifications about new answers and retweets. As a result, as Snowden himself wrote later, users were so active that his mailbox was filled with 47 GB of notifications.
phone number kids - @Snowden Meow, I <3 catfacts pic.twitter.com/KyqZMGggCm
- ️️️️️️️️️️ (@artaimh) November 18, 2015Those Twitter users who had the imprudence to publish a phone number directly in the tape in open access, began to receive on their phones SMS-messages with "interesting facts" about cats. True, the message indicated the ability to unsubscribe from the mailing list. To do this, you had to write a tweet "@Snowden Meow, I <3 catfacts", mentioning in it the account of Edward Snowden, famous for his struggle for the privacy of personal data.
Finding frivolous Twitter users turned out to be easy. For this, the noble programmer wrote only two scripts. One of them analyzed the flow of tweets through the official API of the service and extracted phone numbers from them using regular expression. After that, it remains to turn to a free service for sending SMS messages, which had such a weak CAPTCHA that it was not difficult to cope with its recognition. The choice of the theme for “punitive” SMS is also explained very simply - one of the first tweets by Edward Snowden was devoted to his love for cats.
')
It is not known whether the author of the unusual action is associated with Edward Snowden or even is himself, but earlier a funny situation also occurred with the twitter of a former NSA employee. Edward, having barely registered on the microblogging service, forgot to turn off email notifications about new answers and retweets. As a result, as Snowden himself wrote later, users were so active that his mailbox was filled with 47 GB of notifications.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/367103/
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