Android app to forward incoming SMS messages to an XMPP IM receiver
This is a very simple project written over a few hours a late evening just to get it up and running.
Many internet sites today use so called 2 factor authentication. They pretend to strengthen the "security" by sending an SMS with a one time password whenever you need to log on, or whenever they need to "verify your identity".
In reality, SMS provides very little or none additional security, as an adversary with ease can get all SMS messages to your phone forwarded to himself. So the motivation for this trend is likely to be information harvesting, rather than improved security. A phone number is a very unique identifier that makes it trivial to correlate data about you from various sources.
My defence against this is to use one phone number for each site I use that require this. That means that I have plenty of cheap phones with dual SIM cards, each used solely to receive SMS messages from one "2 factor autnentication" provider (like Twitter, or Google or different corporate VPN providers). However, it is not practical to carry around with all these phones. So I wrote this little app for myself to get all the authentication messages forwarded to a XMPP IM account. That means that I only need to carry a laptop or one phone with Pidgin (or another XMPP client) in order to receive any authentication message.
This app is rough in the edges. There are plenty of room for improvements, and if there is interest, I may put some more work into it. However, it does the job for me right now.
#Use Install the app. In Android 6 or newer, make sure that the app is granted access to SMS. Start it, open settings, and enter name, password and XMPP domain. In "To", enter your XMPP account (for example [email protected]) where the messages will be sent.
SmsRelay is released under GPLv3. It is Free. Free as in Free Beer. Free as in Free Air.
No In App advertising. No collecting data. When you use SmsRelay - your privacy is respected. You are the valued consumer of the product. You yourself is not, and will never be, the product. That is how real, Free Software works.