u/555phones

For many people, the biggest value proposition about Popcorn Mobile is the data.

But what about those of us who are heavy international callers?

For instance, if you have family in Asia or Africa and call them daily, will you eventually bump up against a fair usage limit? I'm just curious if folks have hit the boundaries for international calling.

I understand that for US Mobile for instance, people have been cut off from "unlimited" international calling for absurdly low calls like 18 minutes. But of course, running the phone 24/7 connected to an international number would be highly abusive. So, where's the fine line?

I'm an idiot. I have an old domain name that I used to use for throwaway Email addresses that I let expire. Nothing important there at all. Except... my OpenAI account. Doe!

The domain expired on August 23rd. So we're past the one-month grace period, and I can confirm it went to auction.

I'm very devastated with my own stupidity, but also a little disappointed with Namecheap support. They told me the domain went to auction, no one has bid on it yet, but also the chances of getting it back are very low. They said they'll inform me in a few days if anything can be done, but there's no way to check the status myself. Hell, I'd even bid on my own domain if I could.

I was under the impression that renewing the domain myself would override the auction. It would be nice to at least participate in the auction.

Is there anything I can do here? Maybe a higher level of support? It just seems like I'm gambling by waiting for support to fix it for me. In fact, I contacted Email support followed by chat support, so now I'm afraid having two active cases will negate my efforts to get the domain back.

Thanks for any help!

The FCC is working on new "know your customer" rules. If I understand correctly, they will force phone companies to collect customer IDs in order to sign up for phone service, or to maintain existing phone service. A consequence of this is if you don't have a US passport or government ID to hand in, you would eventually lose your phone service.

I know you may be reading and think, "well, duh, of course they should do that". But it's a big change as there has never been a sim registration law or a ban on foreigners having US phone numbers.

I'm a Canadian, I have had a US phone number since 2010 and have handed it out to a ton of people and places. I use it when I go to the US, and also to keep in touch with Americans back home.

Am I guaranteed to lose this number? Is this law likely to be challenged? I fully understand that nobody wants an overseas scammer to have a US number that spells "loans" or "bank". But I'm sure there will be many snowbirds, ex-pats, tourists, former students and others who snagged Google Voice that are going to be up a creak.

Is this really inevitable? Do I need to transition away from my Google Voice number before they do this?

The more I read about the ridiculous "know your customer" rules that the FCC is trying to implement, the more I think that the writing is on the wall for international users in the long-term.

For some context, the FCC wants all telecommunications providers to ID their users and keep their documentation on file. Those without a presence in the US will eventually be booted off. Telcom providers must pay exorbitant fines for every single scam call their users are responsible for. Essentially, they want to associate your phone number with your identity.

For some context, there are a few other countries that make you register your phone number with the government (the Philippines comes to mind). Locals tell me this literally does nothing to combat scams, they get as many phone scams as ever, and it only hurts vulnerable users. It also makes it incredibly difficult for tourists who want a number. Plus, I don't think I have to tell you how bonkers and invasive it is for the government to monitor your communications in this way and associate them with your government ID.

Anyways, I'm wondering is this a sure thing? Is there pushback and is it likely to be partially successful? I'm wondering if I need to start transitioning away from my US number or if this is only a theoretical risk for the mean time.

I'm on the Lite plan at $10 and voice roaming seems to be working? I'm on DarkStar, but it's roaming on our Canadian networks here in Canada.

Just wanna make sure I won't be billed for this (I think the line is prepaid). Where is it getting the roaming bucket from? How much is included and what's the process when I use too many minutes?

I was going to post this as a comment in another thread, but decided to start my own instead.

I'm actually very curious what this will look like for ex-pats once FCC "know your customer" rules go into affect, both new and existing customers. There are some countries for example the Philippines, where all sim cards have to be registered with the government, and non-residents can't keep phone numbers (e.g. you can only keep your phone number for the duration of your visa). This makes it incredibly difficult for tourists and ex-pats, and according to locals that I've talked to, it does not reduce spam in any meaningful way whatsoever. It also gives phone companies a great deal of control over how you can keep in touch with loved ones in the PH. For example, if you were an American ex-pat living in the Philippines, you could still keep your Tello number, give it out to your friends in the States and keep in touch through Wi-Fi calling. However you could not do this if you moved the opposite way. I have friends in the PH who are only accessible by phone. Long distance rates to the PH are horrific, and I thought I could keep my Philippines number and just use Wi-Fi calling, but I can't because of their sim registration act.

So I have to ask, is the USA moving in the same direction? What will happen to existing ex-pats on Tello, Google Voice etc., and will new users not be able to get numbers?

I genuinely do not think Americans have thought through their ridiculous obsession with spam calls and SMS. I get calls all the time from the scam call centres in India or whatever, and it's annoying, but you just fucking hang up and move on with your day, and it's really no big deal. Americans' obsession with preventing spam calls has already ruined SMS on VOIP numbers. Now, with "know your customer" rules Americans are about to hand over way more control of their numbers to the government, make it harder for ex-pats, all hoping to prevent a few annoying spam calls which if the PH is any example, it won't even work. Meanwhile your government gets more excuse to collect more info on you and your phone numbers and use it for surveillance.

A very poorly documented feature of Family Sharing is that if you share your location with others, it also gives them access to Find My iPhone/Find My Mac for all your Apple devices! That means your family members can: see what devices you have and their battery levels, ping them with a loud sound, check their location, place your devices into lost mode with a message on the lock screen, and (presumably?) erase them.

This is bonkers that this isn't opt in, and I haven't found a way to disable this without stopping location sharing altogether.

Needless to say, this isn't how location sharing works for other friends. They can see where you are on a map, but they don't get access to Find My the same way other family members do.

Is there a workaround to this??? I can't believe Apple doesn't make this more clear and provide a clear opt out.

Just saw that Arq Pro was released, and it's $250 per month!!! No storage included, no web access to backups, it's simply a console for pushing backup plans/settings to Arq, installed on your computers, and monitoring how backups are going.

I'm absolutely staggered by this pricing of $3K a year for backup monitoring software with no storage and no web access.

What do you guys think? Is this a joke? Will they have a single customer? Or am I underestimating the market for this?

US Mobile should be very proud that they completely dominate any other carrier I've come across for free international calling. I think their unlimited minutes apply to over 180+ countries, that's just amazing.

However, I was very surprised how poor the call quality is, even for countries like Canada. Usually MVNOs will use third-party providers to negotiate cheaper rates to expensive countries. But US Mobile even uses a third-party provider for Canada!

Calling Canadian phone numbers sounds terrible. Just leaving a voicemail didn't work very well, sometimes the system thought I was entering DTMF tones when I wasn't, and actually entering DTMF tones didn't work. When talking, sound is often very garbled and difficult to make out.

I'm very disappointed, I don't experience that problem with Tello or Google Voice.

I have a US Mobile account with a Canadian billing address, which they accepted upon signup. I don't have a permanent US address. Hoping to use for travel there and Wi-Fi calling when I'm at home.

I want to port a number from Talkatone, a VOIP app like Google Voice. Talkatone support sent me a PIN and said I don't need an account number or address, just the number and PIN. But US Mobile wants an address and says it has to be a US address of course, I think this is one of the technicalities when porting from VOIP.

I remember people talking about this happening even for people with US addresses, with services like Google Voice. Your provider needs an address, but Google Voice doesn't have one on file for you. One of the Google experts on r/GoogleVoice said to just use the address for Google's main headquarters if your provider insists on an address.

So my question. Can I give a generic address, like Talkatone's headquarters, and assume I'm fine if it goes through? I contacted support and they can't override and skip the address requirement, even if Talkatone doesn't ask for one.

Or do I just accept that as a temporary visitor, I take whatever number I'm assigned and shouldn't fumble around with the address to port in a number?

Thank you.

I'm pretty dumbfounded that a supposedly democratic government railroaded Bill C-22 through the house, arguably one of the most dystopian surveillance bills in a civil society.

As I understand it, it will compel companies to retain metadata on all users for at least six months, as well as permit the government to make tech companies install secret backdoors into hardware and software products as requested by the feds. These orders can't be disclosed at all.

My question is what is the legal future of this horrible bill? Many parts of the bill seem to contravene our rights and freedoms (specifically against unreasonable searches and seizures). The secrecy aspect is particularly troubling. How can you even use evidence in a trial if you can't disclose where you got it from? And doesn't prohibiting disclosure impact open justice and infringe on our freedom of speech? On the other hand, how will we challenge Bill C-22 if we don't know what to challenge? In other words, how do we challenge a secret backdoor that gave the government access to my messages, if we don't know that this secret backdoor exists?

Please give it to me bluntly and no need to be warm and fuzzy. The only thing that makes me feel better when I think about this bill is imagining this is going to be a slam dunk to tear this down in court. But I realize it's probably not going to be that simple.

How can a democratic government do this, and will we possibly be able to stop them?

Edit: also, in a practical context how will this bill affect the legal system? For instance, won't we know there's a secret backdoor somewhere as soon as evidence is used in a trial, because the crown/prosecution will have to disclose where and how they obtained their evidence against you? Or will we get into a situation where the government won't "waste" their backdoor by presenting evidence obtained from a backdoor until they get a "big enough" trial?

Tl; dr: migrated Google Photos to an empty iCloud Photos library, and iCloud is using almost twice the size.

Longer version:

Last week I did something I've wanted to do for a long time: I migrated my Google Photos library to iCloud Photos.

My iCloud Photos library was completely empty when I began the migration, actually it was nonexistent since iCloud Photos was switched off on all my devices. I checked under iCloud's manage storage settings, and iCloud Photos wasn't even listed there before the migration as it was completely empty. all good so far.

I used a 256 GB phone to do the job. I downloaded Google Photos, scrolled through and selected all my photos/videos, then downloaded them to my camera roll. Then I switched on iCloud Photos and connected the phone to power till the sync was completed.

In Google Photos, my storage was listed at 177.49 GB, but in iCloud they are taking up 351.1 GB!!!

As I was using a 256 GB phone to do the sync, this is even more data than my phone could physically hold, so iCloud clearly added some cruft, and I have absolutely no idea what it did. Photo count is exactly the same between iCloud Photos and Google Photos.Note that I watched the storage climb under "manage storage" as it was syncing, from just a few MBs all the way up you double the storage I expected it would take up.

I synced the photos library to my Mac, and my pictures folder has now grown to 380 GB.

What's really frustrating about this is I had to buy the next iCloud storage tier to fit everything. I was hoping it would just sort itself out after a few days, but it hasn't. What can I check? How could this have happened?

I'm curious, what would everyone say are the benefits and drawbacks you find with Tello? I was thinking about this today and decided to start jotting down a list so I have some data when recommending an MVNO.

Here are the benefits:

Rollover, as long as you're renewing an in market plan with specific voice/data limits. You can renew any time and keep your existing text, data and calling balances. Limited rollover feature for loyal users on the unlimited plan now too. This is a unique feature, I haven't heard of it on any other MVNO.

You can do everything yourself via self serve including obtaining your port out PIN, and also toggling a bunch of stuff that many providers don't let you change yourself (e.g. disable voicemail, disable roaming, block data roaming but keep it on for voice/text). This isn't trivial stuff. It's a snap to disable voicemail, set up call forwarding somewhere else like Google Voice or YouMail, but then change your mind and re-provision voicemail.

Tello tolerates ex-pat usage via Wi-Fi calling and roaming, as long as you activate in the USA first. You can use the service indefinitely abroad, swap your phone, and Tello will support you when you need it.

Extremely helpful user to user community on Reddit (here). Reasonable support for an MVNO through customer service.

Here are the drawbacks:

Random automated account bans that are never explained with no way to escalate. Tello will not care or try to help you, although it seems like sometimes you can save the phone number by porting it out. This is the big one, it seems to be incredibly prevalent, and it’s why I'm sometimes afraid of using this company.

Deprioritization on T-Mobile with no access to other carriers.

Doesn't support phone to phone e sim transfers, and drastically limits how many times you can generate new e sims yourself on self serve.

No support for some iPhone features like 5G Standalone or end to end encrypted RCS messaging. This seems to be an issue with the bundle T-Mobile provides to its MVNOs.

Is this a fair list? Anything y'all would add or dispute?