


Messenger apps KakaoTalk and Viber, and quiz app HQ Trivia use the service to verify user phone numbers.We found a shipping notification text sent by Amazon with a link, which opened up Amazon’s delivery tracking page, including the UPS tracking number, en route to its destination in Florida.A Mountain View, Calif.-based credit union, the First Tech Federal Credit Union, also sent a temporary banking password in plaintext to a Nebraska number.Many messages included two-factor verification codes for Google accounts in Latin America.
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Fidelity Investments also sent six-digit security codes to one Chicago Loop area code.Several partners were sent their six-digit two-factor codes to log in to the company’s extranet corporate network.We found a password sent in plaintext to a Los Angeles phone number by dating app Badoo.But the sheer volume of messages processed through the platform per minute - as seen through the database’s visual front-end - suggests that this figure may be higher.Įach record was meticulously tagged and detailed, including the recipient’s cell phone number, the message, the Voxox customer who sent the message and the shortcode they used.Īmong our findings from a cursory review of the data: At the time of its closure, the database appeared to have a little over 26 million text messages year-to-date. But it’s firms like Voxox that act as a gateway and converting those codes into text messages, to be passed on to the cell networks for delivery to the user’s phone.Īfter an inquiry by TechCrunch, Voxox pulled the database offline. Often, app developers - like HQ Trivia and Viber - will employ technologies provided by firms like Telesign and Nexmo, either to verify a user’s phone number or to send a two-factor authentication code, for example. Most don’t think about what happens behind the scenes when you get a text message from a company, whether it’s an Amazon shipping notification or a two-factor code for your login. An example of one text message containing a user’s phone number and their Microsoft account reset code.
