[tor-talk] registration for youtube, gmail over Tor - fake voicemail / sms anyone?

[Mike Hearn]

We blacklist SMS/voice forwarding services when we find them and
re-suspend the accounts that used them. We haven't focused on it much
so there are certainly services we haven't blacklisted yet.

Generally, using these services is dangerous. If spammers have used
the same numbers you get allocated to bypass verification, you can be
treated as part of the cluster and have your account terminated
without appeal.

I don't see the distinction between "pay somebody to create an account
for you" and "buy an account". Both types of activity are likely to
hit various tripwires that will result in forced phone verification of
the account later on. Bear in mind it's not just at signup. If we
suspect an account is being used abusively then the account can be
locked until you pass SMS too.

Right now I don't believe there is any safe way to use Google accounts
via Tor if you aren't willing to provide a phone number, nor do I
believe it's safe for any other large web service. Handling abuse
whilst allowing discardable identities is a fundamental research
problem the Tor team need to solve if they don't want Tor to be
restricted to a "read only" internet (to use Greg Maxwells phrasing).