You’re unusual, relatively speaking. Most people keep numbers for decades.
Ask HN: Why are phone numbers considered a secure personal identifier?
41–46 of 46 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are phone numbers considered a secure personal identifier?
#42You raise 2 points. First is traveling quite a bit with poor cell signal. This one is unfortunate especially with banks that have no alternative 2fa other than a phone based OTP. Why phone? I would believe it's the one thing that near ubiquitous that has a very low barrier to entry. I never had to train my mother how to use OTP when it's an SMS. If she was required to use google authenticator, I'd probably get a phon…
> Google Voice cannot do shortcode SMS for places like Bank of America. This is an important point for OP to consider. Twilio definitely can't receive SMS from US short codes[1]. When my number was at Google Voice I thought it could receive messages from short codes, at least in the recent past, but I ported it out so I can't test. [1] -- https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223181668-Can-T...
Don't know about BOA, but I've never had a problem receiving verification codes on my voice number which is my daily driver.
Re: Ask HN: Why are phone numbers considered a secure personal identifier?
#43You can use google voice for free, and get text also via email. This way you don't even have to worry about swapping the number.
Edit: as others mentioned this sort of defeat 2FA, but I read the OP message as not trying to have a good 2FA solution, but being forced to use SMS by banks & co.
Re: Ask HN: Why are phone numbers considered a secure personal identifier?
#44You raise 2 points. First is traveling quite a bit with poor cell signal. This one is unfortunate especially with banks that have no alternative 2fa other than a phone based OTP. Why phone? I would believe it's the one thing that near ubiquitous that has a very low barrier to entry. I never had to train my mother how to use OTP when it's an SMS. If she was required to use google authenticator, I'd probably get a phon…
Oh man, I wish I had seen this thread earlier. I've been trying to get Capital One to send text to a Skype number to no avail. Then my card got swallowed by an ATM.
Re: Ask HN: Why are phone numbers considered a secure personal identifier?
#45Counterpoint: I’ve had the same number for 20 years. In all that time, I’ve had maybe 5 instances where I needed to get a confirmation number and couldn’t get enough reception. It works well enough, the vast majority of the time, for the vast majority of people. You’re an extreme edge case.
Over 1.4 billion people travelled internationally in 2018. You’re making an assumption based on a single data point, just as you imply the author to be. Do you use PayPal? It’s impossible to even login while you are abroad.
I travel a lot (about 100 days in another country in the last year). I live in the UK. I am not implying my anecdote is data - just adding another anecdote to the pile.
Re: Ask HN: Why are phone numbers considered a secure personal identifier?
#46Well, what else are you going to use for a secure personal identifier? Email? Credit card? Neither of those are especially more secure, and it's at least slightly harder to get a new phone number (and much harder to get a specific phone number) than an email address. This raises the cost of spam slightly. Systems which actually need to secure a large amount of digital valuables or face customer complaints (i.e. games…
Up until very recently, AT&T forced me to have a "four digits" password to login on their website (prepaid phone).
That's how secure I see phones.