Provide phone number verification via SMS OTP using Prav app
Pirate Praveen Mon 10 Mar 2025 7:21AMPublicSeen by 25Currently we provide accounts on request and it involves a manual process. Prav is looking for gratis XMPP providers as a fallback option since Prav accounts need subscription and some people may not be able to/ want to pay. See https://codeberg.org/prav/pravserver/issues/21 for details. This would help us avoid the manual processing (we can still offer that to people who don't want phone number verification for more privacy) and prevent spam sign ups to a large extend (creating many phone numbers would be costly and riskier to do anonymously).
We will need to provide a component API to create users (may be later for directory query) and access to prav server to connect to this end point. ejabberd already has the required component code, we will have to write a component for prosody.
Pirate Praveen ·Mon 26 May 2025 9:41AM
@fugata while just providing phone number is convenient - it has serious privacy implications when you join groups, it will expose your phone number to people you might not want to share as well. So custom username mitigates this flaw while still keeping the discoverability by phone number intact. This was one of the first decisions we made and many people are waiting for it. It might be a minority, but these people are going to be strongest proponents of the project. The other option of different providers is also a crucial one as buying a subscription can also be a barrier to people. Quicksy is struggling to continue providing the service due to sms costs and Daniel might stop new registration soon. While simplicity is an important goal, we cannot forget about its privacy implications or financial constraints as well. Many times complicated challenges require some complications in solutions too. But custom xmpp provider will be hidden option, only people who explicitly seek that will find it. Custom username won't be default, only those who are curious will explore it. The default flow will remain the same as we have now. We won't force people to make choices as there will be a default option that will not need any choices to get started.