Tune Talk is conducting a user verification check via SMS, which is a bad idea

Tune Talk users out there may have or will soon receive an SMS that might come across as a scam text message at first, but it’s apparently from Tune Talk themselves.

In a post by Tune Talk, the telco claims that they’re sending out SMSes to their users as a means of a user verification check, ostensibly to prevent abuse of their prepaid lines and to protect user data. The telco then goes on to say that if you do receive an SMS from Tune Talk, you’ll need to reply to it to confirm that your Tune Talk line is still active.

In case you can’t tell—because it looks like Tune Talk can’t—this is a very bad way to conduct a user verification check. For starters, all mobile lines need to be registered to a valid ID anyway. Even if someone did used a fake ID to register their Tune Talk line, the same person can also reply to the message from Tune Talk. On top of that, a PSA like the one Tune Talk made can end up giving scammers ideas by pretending to be Tune Talk, and then sending out their own SMSes to unsuspecting Tune Talk users.

Furthermore, this brings up more questions than answers such as if the person Tune Talk is SMSing to doesn’t have enough credit to reply to the telco (perhaps they have the line as a backup SIM), will Tune Talk then just cancel the line eventhough there’s actually a customer still using it? Also, there’s no mention on whether or not the SMS reply to Tune Talk is free or if the customer will need to pay for it. In fact, Tune Talk also never stated what exactly the user is supposed to reply Tune Talk’s SMS with.

Overall, Tune Talk should rethink their strategy of doing a user verification check as their current method has one too many flaws that can be abused by others too.