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by techsupporter 2972 days ago
Which is hilarious because fraudsters can trivially acquire many "legitimate" mobile phone numbers by acquiring prepaid phones and there are entire forums (two on Reddit I know of off the top of my head) where people make a few pennies receiving and then sending the verification codes back to the scammer. I actually do a variant of this and keep a couple of crappy Android phones activated on two Sprint MVNOs that I can use as "throwaway" numbers for a service that demands a "real" mobile number for SMS. I have zero desire to give my actual mobile phone number to anyone except friends and family.

Meanwhile, people who are simply trying to get flexible--or, in the case of someone using a Google Voice number on a Google account with 2FA and a strong password, a more secure phone number than T-Mobile could provide--communications are needlessly punished.