Ask HN: Why are more and more websites asking for phone numbers? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why are more and more websites asking for phone numbers?

#41

Post by Razengan » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 6:13 AM UTC

notbingo wrote: post #9

Doches wrote: post #3

> would be considered unacceptable... A more honest way of saying this would be that it wouldn't have worked -- requiring a phone number during onboarding would drastically lower your conversion rates. So what's changed? Is this a generational (grumble grumble millenial grumble grumble) thing? Also, I'd love to know what sparked your asking this question. I don't see a particular uptick in services requiring a phone…

Twitter demanding a phone number to unlock a 5 min old account after saying it was optional and then pretending I broke their rules just to get my phone number. As for the uptick in services requiring phone numbers? All the messaging apps, all the freelance websites, facebook, google, classified ad sites/apps. And these are just examples of things I tried using.

> Twitter demanding a phone number to unlock a 5 min old account after saying it was optional and then pretending I broke their rules just to get my phone number.

Microsoft/Outlook is insufferably obnoxious in that regard, the last time I saw people signing up for it. At least Gmail asks for your number up front — Microsoft pretends you fucked up and weasels it out of you.

Re: Ask HN: Why are more and more websites asking for phone numbers?

#42

Post by garaetjjte » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 8:33 AM UTC

k5hp wrote: post #2

Phone numbers are more convenient in contrary to email: every individual has only one phone number, which hardly ever changes. They consider the phone number as unique identifier of a user. Many websites think that lots of users have multiple emails and thus maybe sign up twice. Again, it's only about convenience.

https://xkcd.com/1789/

Re: Ask HN: Why are more and more websites asking for phone numbers?

#43

Post by wizzerking » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

I never give out my cell phone to any company. Doing so constitutes "prior business" , and so putting my cell phone on the do not call list is moot. I get enough crap phone calls for people who had this number before me. It is too expensive to have a crap or garbage cell phone, like I have crap or garbage email adresses

Re: Ask HN: Why are more and more websites asking for phone numbers?

#44

Post by WA » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 9:18 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #32

Spam and abuse are much easier problems to solve when it's reasonably difficult to obtain a new identifier with a clean reputation. As much as you may consider it your human right to open thousands of new untraceable accounts per second with full functionality at zero cost, humoring you requires bending over backwards and resorting to a cat-and-mouse arms race of probabilistic anti-spam and anti-bot techniques. As th…

I only need one Netflix account, and yet they pester me with adding a phone number.

Re: Ask HN: Why are more and more websites asking for phone numbers?

#45

Post by doronrotem » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 11:30 AM UTC

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #34

closeparen wrote: post #32

Spam and abuse are much easier problems to solve when it's reasonably difficult to obtain a new identifier with a clean reputation. As much as you may consider it your human right to open thousands of new untraceable accounts per second with full functionality at zero cost, humoring you requires bending over backwards and resorting to a cat-and-mouse arms race of probabilistic anti-spam and anti-bot techniques. As th…

Slow down there. Where's this hostility coming from? I would rather not give my phone number to companies either.

I agree with you: I would rather not give my phone number to companies either.

But once you start to see spam or get spam messages from other users (imagine a dating site) you would like this spam to stop. Having a (unique) phone number a mandatory requirement during registration can make spam fighting much easier.