How to beat Flippa phone verification when creating dummy accounts

[Clinton]

People who've been banned at Flippa seem to have uncovered an easy way around the Flippa phone verification system.

Apparently, to create a new phone verified account you can just add a "0" to the end of the number on your previously banned account and it goes through their system as unique.

If the seller/buyer you're dealing with has a relatively new account at Flippa, bear this in mind.

[daveslutzkin]

People who've been banned at Flippa seem to have uncovered an easy way around the Flippa phone verification system.

Apparently, to create a new phone verified account you can just add a "0" to the end of the number on your previously banned account and it goes through their system as unique.

If the seller/buyer you're dealing with has a relatively new account at Flippa, bear this in mind.

Clinton, thanks for pointing this out, we'll check it out and hopefully close that security hole if it exists.

[Clinton]

Thanks, Dave. It would be reassuring if you dropped in to update us when this is fixed.

[Clinton]

Incidentally, is this sorted now, Dave? Even if it is, it appears there are many easy ways to get a free phone number.

For example, in Washington in the US, you can go to gtalk2voip.com add your Google chat name, send the text mypage to the bot, copy the SIP id, go to ipkall.com and use the gtalk2voip.com as the SIP proxy and use the SIP id provided earlier and you get a free number from ipkall by email. You can dial that number to test it before using it for a Flippa account phone verification.

OK, the description above is not a Dummy's Guide, but that's intentionally so.

[benitez17]

Incidentally, is this sorted now, Dave? Even if it is, it appears there are many easy ways to get a free phone number.

For example, in Washington in the US, you can go to gtalk2voip.com add your Google chat name, send the text mypage to the bot, copy the SIP id, go to ipkall.com and use the gtalk2voip.com as the SIP proxy and use the SIP id provided earlier and you get a free number from ipkall by email. You can dial that number to test it before using it for a Flippa account phone verification.

OK, the description above is not a Dummy's Guide, but that's intentionally so.

I wouldn't worry about tipping off any potential scammers to a method to get a throwaway phone number. There are so many ways that automated phone verification is almost useless. I could get a dozen new phone numbers in a couple hours at little to no cost, and could get an unlimited number of phone numbers if I was willing to pay a couple dollars for each one.

Maybe requiring an update from time to time or before a user takes some sort of action (e.g. buying a site, listing a site) would be more helpful. I initially thought this was a great idea, but I don't think it works as well as I believed it did.

[Clinton]

I wouldn't worry about tipping off any potential scammers

Actually, I shouldn't have bothered. The earlier and easy method of adding a zero seems to still work

[Clinton]

I didn't want to start a new thread just to point out this auction, and this thread seemed the best match: Auction at Flippa

Selling this site

I'm sure you have heard of PVA. Phone Verified Accounts... More and more Organizations are using this method all the time for verification purposes. ... Yes Disposable phone numbers. This site hear sells everything from Hotmail accounts, Yahoo Accounts, Aol Accounts, Youtube Accounts, And Even Craigslist. ... I am giving you the Ability to sell Phone Numbers And Buy them wholesale for Dirt cheap. I mean $2 in most cases and even cheaper with quantity.

[grynge]

You could in the past in Australia (who have some of the strongest phone number laws) get vodafone sims for free (they now cost $3.00) and have them setup and registered in any persons name. I know from experience this still works but now it is from an international phone company cost is $0.