[Asterisk-Users] free dids on goiax.com

[trixter aka Bret McDanel]

On Tue, 2005-10-18 at 16:20 -0400, John Cianfarani wrote:
> Why not just ask for a small one time payment $1 or something from a
> credit card, or paypal, or something along those lines so you would have
> someway to trace back to an abuser.
> 
> John

Could even refund that after 30 days or something (use paypal refunds
are free, credit cards not so much).  That way you leave the
authentication up to other people.

However there is one problem with this.  Not everyone can have paypal
and not everyone who can have paypal wants paypal.  Their policies have
gotten them into some hot water.  Tying one service to another is fine
in some circumstances however the two services need to be compatible
from a user perspective.  I for example refuse to use paypal even though
they did pay me my money after the lawsuit I was involved in against
them.

Here is another idea for an automated system that only requires a phone
number they can use.  While it can be used for harassment to a point, it
wouldnt be that effective.  Everything has its drawbacks right?
Blacklist a given number (for some time period) upon multiple successive
failures to prevent too much harassment.

User signs up and enters a telephone number where they can be reached.
The system automatically calls that number at some point and asks the
user to enter their pin (provided upon signup).  If the pin is correct
they are authorizing that this is indeed their number, they signed up
for the service, and all that.  Maybe have a perm blacklist digit to
press if they dont want to ever get calls again for authorization.

This way you can at least limit people to one account per phone number,
make it interactive (they have to press dtmf to authenticate) to prevent
some voicemail box with dtmf as its message (has happened before for
automated collect calling systems where the VMB 'accepts' the charges
automatically) and provides some accountability.

Its not perfect, people can get multiple phone numbers easily and
quickly, especially from other free providers like ipkall.com or
stanaphone.com without any authentication.  They can change their number
easily enough to get new accounts.  They can still run amuck pranking
PSAPs and such, but this will help mitigate.

Number one drawback it would only work for people that have phones in
the 'free' area (US48 and canada presumably).  Anyone else anywhere in
the world would not be able to use the service, kinda goes against the
'global internet' aspect.


-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
UK +44 870 340 4605   Germany +49 801 777 555 3402
US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200
FreeWorldDialup: 635378
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