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Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by AgalmicVentures on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @01:41AM (#21122364)
You're absolutely right about the various advantages of pagers over cell phones.

On the other hand, all of that medical information goes over the air in plain text. It is trivial to capture and decode POCSAG [1], requiring less than $100 of hardware: a Raspberry Pi 3 has enough horsepower to handle the 2 RTL-SDR's needed to capture both the 929MHz and 931MHz bands.

Modern security simply demands that pagers go away (or at least be heavily modified). This is not a theoretical concern [2][3].

[1] https://github.com/pvachon/tsl-sdr

[2] https://www.rtl-sdr.com/art-installation-eavesdrops-on-hospi...

[3] https://openprivacy.ca/blog/2019/09/09/open-privacy-discover...

Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by alxlaz on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:19AM (#21124475)
Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to get all the security benefits of modern technology without the distraction, the sloppy user interface, the complexity (and attack surface) and user hostility -- in a word, without the incredibly poor design -- of modern technology.

A pager-like device with proper encryption isn't extraordinarily challenging. But planned obsolescence or selling ads is pretty hard to do with this sort of technology, so despite plenty of interest from users, there's not that much interest from companies.

Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by SmellyGeekBoy on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @11:03AM (#21126063)
To be fair it generally costs money to send a page. It's the expectation of free messaging that creates the need for advertising - unless people are willing to go back to the days of paying per message.
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by SSLy on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @10:33AM (#21125714)
Have you ever used Signal?
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by theclaw on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @03:59AM (#21123055)
Maybe I’m living in the 1970s but I always assumed pagers just showed a phone number and you were supposed to call back?
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by gambiting on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @04:44AM (#21123307)
No, you can definitely send a text message to them, they just don't have the ability to send anything back.
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by m23khan on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @09:23AM (#21125022)
the most basic pagers can only receive callback number. More advanced ones have additional features to display text messages as well.
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by 83457 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @07:32AM (#21124184)
Except for the 2-way ones
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by SmellyGeekBoy on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @11:03AM (#21126076)
What next? 2-way voice communication!? ;)
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by chrisseaton on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @04:53AM (#21123353)
If you can send a sequence of digits, you can also send a sequence of letters (a text message) using the same technology.
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by asdaddasdad on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @03:09AM (#21122747)
Does the paged text typically contain information that can identify the patient?
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by lunchables on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @09:31AM (#21125094)
https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/health-care/article...

"An information technology worker from Johnson County recently told The Star about the issue after he stumbled across hospital pager information while playing with an antenna, which he bought to get TV channels on his laptop computer. With a simple program, the antenna picks up radio signals that can be digitized.

Except instead of picking up local TV stations, he started seeing things like this, with the patient's and doctor's names included:

RQSTD RTM: (patient's name) 19 M Origin Unit: EDOF Admitting: (doctor's name) Level of Care: 1st Avail Medical Diagnosis: TONSILAR BLEED, ANEMIA, THROMBOCYTOPENIA

It was the personal patient data of a 19-year-old man, broadcast across the airwaves for anyone to read. And it was coming from a local hospital, which was sending the message to a doctor on a pager."

Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by hannob on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @04:38AM (#21123278)
I looked into some of such cases in Germany, there the answer was definitely yes. Names and addresses, coupled with extremely sensitive medical information.
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by satanspastaroll on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @03:41AM (#21122928)
I'd imagine it to be trivial to also send malicious signals and jam the system.
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by giancarlostoro on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:35AM (#21123889)
That sounds like any radio frequency though. Alao a great way to get the FCC knocking on your door sooner or later.
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by satanspastaroll on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @07:02AM (#21124046)
True you could create a trash beacon for any frequency, but as you said it'd be very "loud". Disrupting service with seemingly innocent messages would be much harder to detect though
Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by giancarlostoro on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:13AM (#21124423)
Oh I see, you're suggesting a very specified attack. Sounds like a smaller scale Stingray or something, but for beepers.

Edit: Yeah I'm not entirely familiar with interference detection, but I would always suspect some HAM somewhere will figure it out and report it.

Re:Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50... by emilfihlman on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:20AM (#21123812)
>the 2 RTL-SDR's needed to capture both the 929MHz and 931MHz bands.

A single R820T can do about 2.56MHz bandwidth, which is enough to handle both bands simultaneously.