This should be far more secure and privacy friendly than a Sim card of a cellular connection. Why isn’t this done more often? What are the Pros and Cons. I bet the price is similar as well.
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Cons:
You absolutely cannot get 2FA authenticator codes from 90% of services. Many services that require a phone number even without 2FA just for “verify you’re a human” or because they want your data or to verify region use shortcode services that also will not work with ANY VOIP provider.
You will not receive their codes. These companies vary from banking institutions to gaming companies to online shopping marketplaces and stores to a Google account (used to be you could get an automated phone call to verify an account, not anymore, must be able to receive SMS from shortcodes that are disabled for VOIP numbers to register and to recover an account) just about anyone you could end up doing business with.
A shockingly large amount of companies demand phone numbers and send verification texts before allowing you to do business with them, to create an account, to recover an account, to delete an account, to place an order, etc.
They really shouldn’t, it’s a bad security practice but companies love it because with a phone number they can lower support costs by just allowing people to do a self-service where they get an automated text and can unlock their locked account. They also love harvesting that data and preventing anonymization with VOIP numbers and the reduction of fraud and increase of reliable KYC that comes with requiring them.
And they all take it as a given that EVERYONE or at least 99% have a cell plan with a non-VOIP number that works with these and the 1% who don’t they don’t care about in the developed world and are an acceptable loss.
You can buy for cents phone numbers online for one time verification purpose or even rent the number for long term if you need. It’s better to use these anonymous cheap throwaway numbers if you want privacy instead of your real phone number for everything.
You probably shouldn’t be using a service that requires a phone number. More often than not, they use it as a backdoor to bypass your password and it leaves your account super vulnerable.
Can’t I just transfer my existing phone number, from any Pay As You Go SIM?
You can but they’ll find out. It’s reported or flagged or something, they can tell what provider holds a number and they block VOIP ones. Also if a number was ever previously a VOIP number do not try and transfer it back to proper cellular as it will still remain blocked for many but not all of these for years potentially.
90% of American commercial services that is.
Online services or many/most European services have more proper 2FA (TOTP, app-based, card reader OTP, etc…)
Can you name me an EU bank that doesn’t demand a phone number to signup?
Unfortunately, PSD2 doesn’t support TOTP and other strong 2FA solutions, so they all appear to require phone numbers. This is one area where EU is worse than US
My EU bank never ever used my phone number to verify anything. They only used it to contact me on some occasions. 2FA is done through their app.
Oh, right, their closed source app. Thats allowed. So it requires a phone.
So the OTP is still transmitted to satisfy the requirements of PSD2. But TOTP (a more secure system that doesn’t transmit the OTP at all) is not allowed.
That is a completely sepereate issue from the above commenter.
Also an issue, but indeed a separate issue from using unsecure SMS as TOTP.
I don’t follow. Banks are required to use insecure SMS for OTPs by PSD2
I think how often this is a problem varies widely from person to person. I don’t remember the last time I gave a mobile number out to a company, but it was more than a few years ago. The last few that strictly required one were non-essential; I just took my business elsewhere.