[PLUG] Security headaches

[wes]

On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 2:39 PM John Jason Jordan <johnxj at gmx.com> wrote:

>
> But now comes the killer. I do not want the Google Voice account to
> have anything to do with my Android phone that is connected to
> MetroPCS. And why is that? Because the whole purpose of this exercise
> is to be able to receive text messages sent by Facebook. My Android
> phone cannot display text messages because (after rooting it) I deleted
> the entire texting application. I did this because the only text
> messages that I ever received were spam (averaging about one a day), and
> the phone would give me a loud beep to make sure that I knew that I had
> another exciting spam message to view. I don't need this.
>
> If the Google Voice account sends the text messages to my Android phone
> they will not be viewable. What I need is for Google Voice to display
> text messages on my computer, i.e., in Chrome or Firefox. As far as I
> can tell that is not an option.
>
>
I use Google Voice. One of the things I like about it is its redundancy. I
can get text messages via at least 4 interfaces simultaneously. The
downside is that I have more items to mark "read" but for me, that is well
worth the benefit of making it very difficult to get locked out of my
ability to receive messages. In my line of work I need to be Highly
Available(tm) and this goes a long way towards helping with that.

Google Voice offers a smartphone app that is unrelated to the Messages (or
similar) app that usually handles text messages going to the phone by
default. This is not mandatory. However, it will insist that you provide a
number to a real phone, so be prepared for that. It will forward phone
calls to the Google Voice number over to the real phone number.

I get GV text messages in the app, over email, in a Chrome browser
extension, and in a web interface found at voice.google.com. Your physical
phone does not have to be involved.

-wes