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I wish to setup a telephone number confirming system within my app, pretty much like WhatsApp does i.e. it sends you a PIN, it arrives on the Android device and that proves you are the owner of the device (telephone number).

Is this possible to fake an SMS via code from myself to myself so that I cannot pickup the Pin, again via to code, without any intervention from the user?

I looked at some reverse billing systems, but I couldn't find any that worked in all countries and of course this requires that the receiver pays for the SMS.

What are my best options here? And how would this work via the emulator?

Am I on the right track here? or should I be looking at an alternative solution or maybe reverse billing?

Edit

Here is an explanation with more detail of what I am trying to do.

My app requires the user to enter his/her phone number, I need to confirm that this phone number is a truthful one so I would like to send an SMS to the phone number / device.

This is basically exactly what happens with WhatsApp, you enter your phone number and they send you a PIN.

It's the process that I am not sure of, and if it's possible without reverse billing services.

I need to send a message to the device, I could do it via a server (web service) but I would end up paying for the SMS to the device.

So was hoping there was some sort of trick where from within code I send an SMS to the actually save device; once it arrives I can pickup the PIN and check it against a database on my server. If it's valid, I can confirm that this user does really have this phone number.

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Martin
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1 Answers1

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What I understood from your question:

You want to send an SMS to a user and let the app intercept it. You want a way to test it on the emulator without actually sending an SMS.

A possible solution might be to write an SMS directly to the phone's inbox BUT I'm not sure if the BroadcastReceiver would actually intercept it.

Why don't you try it and let us know.

Here's how to write an SMS to the inbox.

Here's how to set up an SMS BroadCastReceiver.

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Benito Bertoli
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