Promotional SMS machine

[Fanatical Meat]

Anyone ever used one and is it possible to host your own at home?
I am interested in sending mass sms to 100 to 200 people, it is for a non profit I belong to. They will be simple monthly notifications. No sales scripts.

Questions:
Are the web based paid sms apps secure as in if I put all this info in is that info reasonably safe? I DO NOT WANT to accidentally sign people up for various unsolicited sms
Can such a small scale thing be hosted at home?

Anyone have experience with this? I am looking for advice.
Thanks

 

[lxskllr]

You could do it through email. It's free and will never leave your computer(aside from the obvious recipient).

edit:
and I mean send sms via email client.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

You could do it through email. It's free and will never leave your computer(aside from the obvious recipient).

edit:
and I mean send sms via email client.

Hmmm, I’ve worked in telecom and remember phones having an email address but it cropped the message stupidly as in there was a bunch of stuff in the message you typically didn’t want like phone@gateway.whatever.co
Does it still do this and wouldn’t you need to know each numbers carrier to send it?

 

[lxskllr]

Hmmm, I’ve worked in telecom and remember phones having an email address but it cropped the message stupidly as in there was a bunch of stuff in the message you typically didn’t want like phone@gateway.whatever.co
Does it still do this and wouldn’t you need to know each numbers carrier to send it?

First question I don't know. Second, yea, you'd have to know the carrier. Typing that out now, I see that's a problem. Sorry :^(

 

[Fanatical Meat]

First question I don't know. Second, yea, you'd have to know the carrier. Typing that out now, I see that's a problem. Sorry :^(

Yeah great suggestion security wise, too hard to know who has what carrier. I still appreciate it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

You could do it through email. It's free and will never leave your computer(aside from the obvious recipient).

edit:
and I mean send sms via email client.

You need to know the provider of each individual number though, but suppose that is an option if he just has a set list that people have to sign up for. They can specify their provider in the form.

Honestly I'm surprised it's not easier to send SMS programmatically. I remember looking into it myself as I wanted to find a way to send alarms via SMS instead of email and eventually just gave up.

 

[IronWing]

I routinely send sms messages to a list of about a hundred people. Yes, you need to know the carrier for each recipient. No, the headers don’t show up in the message. Messages have to be very short. The email subject line shows in the message so don’t repeat the subject in the email body. Formatting gets stripped. If announcing a call in number or event, get the important stuff up front. Different carriers truncate differently.

 

[IronWing]

We dumped group me for email as there were significant delays in group me messages getting delivered, some instantly to some recipients and multi hour delays to others. Email has some of that but not as bad.

 

[Charmonium]

There is a smallish group I belong to - I'm sure it's well over a few hundred but I don't manage the list.

If you use whatever gmail address they have associated with their phone, they'll get a notification with either.

Not sure how android handles non-gmail addresses. Then there's also Apple to worry about.

I suppose you could assign everyone an incremented gmail address name. But then you're herding cats.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Just learned google messages offers a sms service however their privacy policy is not clearly listed and it’s sort of vague about bulk messaging.

Edit: that option is out, no app for iPhones. Not critical however it is nice to have.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I know nothing about app development, but I wonder how hard it would be to write an app that accepts a string of data from a server and then sends a SMS out. It could be a dedicated phone used only for that purpose, so even if you make it an actual SMS app and make it the default, it would be the only thing the phone does. Have it listen on a tcp port and if it gets a properly formatted string like json or something it will interpret the data and send the text. Just make sure it's on wifi only and not on data as you don't want that listening to the outside world. I would pull the battery out and wire it directly to a 4v power supply and it would basically just be treated like a server. Of course this would require a separate sim card and paying for a separate service.

 

[lxskllr]

I was thinking something along those lines also. A cheap android with a cheap prepaid plan as a dedicated spammer. I looked in fdroid for apps that blast sms, but the ones they had were old and no longer developed. They may still work, or it might be able to be done with other apps, but I assumed op didn't want a huge project, so I quit looking.

 

[skyking]

how about sending from a google voice number? that seems too easy.
Check this out
https://brismuth.com/how-to-send-bulk-texts-via-google-voice-from-a-spreadsheet-d400e4e5062b

 

[skyking]

make a spreadsheet and Vi-O-LA!

 

[Fanatical Meat]

how about sending from a google voice number? that seems too easy.
Check this out
https://brismuth.com/how-to-send-bulk-texts-via-google-voice-from-a-spreadsheet-d400e4e5062b

Interesting, I’ll look into this.
What’s everyone’s thoughts on a browser extension being secure-ish. I don’t want to be told I signed people up for various spam sms is this data kept reasonably private?

 

[lxskllr]

I MUCH prefer libre software I can see the source code on. Not that I'm a programmer, but it means others can look at it too, and I can muddle my way through some code if I really want to. Since you probably just want to get shit done, and are less philosophically motivated than me, look over the company that produces the extension. Where are they from, and more importantly, how are they making money? If no actual cash passes hands from any party, that would raise privacy concerns for me. People who make proprietary software sometimes do it for fun, without any recompense from users, but they're pretty rare. I'd rather pay for a service so I know where their money comes from. It's no guarantee, but there's less likelihood of shady shit going on in the background imo, and since it's a business contract, courts can get involved.