Spencer Dailey

SIM-swap attacks continue year after year because companies (that know better) leaned into the awful idea of using SMS for password resets and account logins. These companies include Apple, Dropbox, PayPal, Block, Google, and many others. What is a SIM-swap attack? It’s where a bad guy asks a carrier to port your cell-phone number to their phone.

Apple has recently made bold claims about respecting the environment across business decisions. ♻️ And it seems to be making strides in many areas, like using recycled materials in products and clean energy in many aspects of its operations. 🎉 That’s why a deviation from this posture at last month’s event stood out: Only iPhone 15 models will benefit from a new feature that is designed to protect batteries, despite the feature likely being possible on earlier models.

Late last year, in a span of under two weeks, I received dozens of political spam texts around Austin’s Prop A ballot measure. I’m sure countless people around the world also get unsolicited garbage texts. Such text campaigns threaten to discourage voter turnout and turn people against each other. Because SMS texts lack authentication, users can’t know who actually sent them, nor can we effectively block them.