Jason KoeblerThe much-hyped SIM farm the Secret Service seized uses readily available off the shelf tech that, very interestingly, has also become critical to ticket scalping. I, like others, am extremely not buying the idea that this was intended to take down the cell network
an interesting bean 
@jasonkoebler everyone gets a dozen spam calls and texts a day, and we are expecting to be shocked that there exists an infrastructure to do this
I_give_u_worms@timmy @jasonkoebler here's what the FCC has done about them: jack shit
FinchHaven sfba@jasonkoebler I want to know how much it has to do with follower counts on X, home of #GrokTheRacistAI for catturd2 and other unbelievable shithouse crazy accounts, including carbon copy crocodile tears for Charlie Kirk
Workshopshed@jasonkoebler sms or voice spam seems much more likely
I AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑🔥@jasonkoebler I'd posted yesterday that this was giving off scalper vibes to me.
Cluster Fcku@jasonkoebler these rely on real phone numbers from discount mobile phone services. The articles quotes $3 per number, beating $9 to $24 monthly. Who has $3/mo??? This is phone/sms, not just IoT data. Am I missing something here on the cost side?
Daniel Schildt@clusterfcku @jasonkoebler There are IoT SIM Cards that are widely used in electricity meters. Those are available much cheaper in bulk quantities compared to regular consumer phone services. IoT devices only send and receive SMS (and a bit of data) so it is way cheaper for telecom companies to sell those in large amounts to hardware companies (as infrastructure costs to provide network services are much lower compared to regular consumers).
Telecoms themselves give cheap plans when a company wants to buy (tens of) thousands of SIMs at one time. Side effect is that not all of the buyers have good intentions, even while bulk orders are essential for a lot of regular valid use cases.
@autiomaa @jasonkoebler thank you for this answer, it prompted me to investigate: IoT is over IP and doesn't need a phone number, but there are of course no-data pay as you go voice & text plans at very low monthly fees. So these scammers (or anyone) can get a legit phone number, pay a tiny bit per month per number, and just pay per SMS as needed to authenticate.
catatonicprime@jasonkoebler "... and they give a type of cyberpunk visual that, frankly, is extremely my shit."
Mine too Jason, mine too.
John Deters@jasonkoebler Might these have been used to flood congressional offices with automated deepfake calls in support of or opposed to current legislation?
Like making calls on behalf of those disgusting SuperPACs and their millions of dollars in dark money?
And is it possible this administration is so incompetent that they busted a phone farm used by right wing billionaires?
Because I could use a good laugh right now.
Mistial DeveloperThat would require the politicians to care about their constitutuents, though.
Scam texts seems the more likely option. Could potentially be used to sit there phishing *@*.gov 24/7.