Sending Anonymous SMS
Under anonymous SMS, we mean SMS sent from a website without the ability to establish identity or the exact location of the sender. In this chapter, we will not consider services for sending SMS from websites – it is very simple: just enter "send SMS online" in a search engine and choose a convenient site.
When it comes to choosing a site, it is extremely difficult to give recommendations, as data collection and processing occur in the so-called "backend" of the service, hidden from both users and specialists. By analyzing the website's code, we can only make general assumptions of not very high accuracy. Some recommend using official operator websites whenever possible, as they are better protected and pay more attention to data protection. This is probably a fair statement, although we have already told you about the leak of sent SMS through the operator MegaFon’s website, where thousands of SMS were freely accessible along with information about senders and recipients. The main question is the anonymity of the sender, which is achieved only with comprehensive anonymity settings when connecting to the web resource, including the presence of Tor or VPN and correct browser configuration.
I want to mention Tor right away: many websites block sending from users of the Tor network. I have even encountered websites that blocked IP masking by restricting the ability to send SMS only from IP addresses in the Russian Federation. Websites that allow free SMS sending collect maximum information about the sender to always have the ability to establish their data and respond to law enforcement requests. The main danger lies in the real IP address, which must be hidden. Also, check for IPv4 and IPv6 leaks, as well as DNS leaks, WebRTC IPv4, WebRTC IPv6 – we teach all of this in the current course. Any of these leaks will have a very negative impact on your anonymity.
Remember that websites can secretly "pull" a lot of valuable information from your browser, such as under which account you are registered on social networks and even which websites you have visited, so for anonymous surfing, it is better to use a separate browser and to prevent JS attacks, at least install the NoScript extension. We will teach you how to protect against such attacks in our course on anonymity and security online. Such websites always use cookies. Even if you sent an SMS to one number, then logged out of the site, changed your IP address, returned, and sent an SMS to another number, the site will recognize you, and all your SMS sending history will be in one list. You need to clear cookies if you want to change your identity, or use the browser's private mode.