Surprise Text Message Sent by Google Voice

& (verbiage overflow)Mon 25 August 2014RSS

When you download an app to an Android phone, there is a list of permissions the app requires and that you must accept. But until now I've never observed an app making use of one of these permission unbeknownst to me.

Yesterday I tried placing a phone call with Google Voice for Android, which I had downloaded for the occasion. The permissions listed include SMS. To my surprise, this morning I find that a text was placed at the time of the call from my phone to a VoIP number 760-537-0537, which commenters on the Internet say is a Google number.

The message was a 120-character-long hash, and I suppose it was sent to support the use of the app — perhaps to verify that my phone was actually in my possession and not being spoofed by software.

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