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by vort3 1509 days ago
Can you recommend me any real working website where I could buy cheap one time virtual number that could be used to enable 2FA for my account?

And I hope they will never ever again ask me to confirm anything using that number.

2 comments

I have used voip.ms for years. The basic plan costs approx 1 usd/m with no contracts, etc. and any messages received can be forwarded to and responded from email.
Nice try but this won't work with a lot of security providers.

Lookup APIs are available to identify line type and most will specifically reject voip numbers. The more obstinate providers I have encountered (some banks for example) will actually have a real human place a call to any number provided at sign up and reject it if they can't verbally talk to you.

It supports voice as well at this price - I use it with Linphone to receive and place calls plus I was also able to setup a forward rule where any calls to voip.ms numbers will be forwarded to my cellphone. Edit: you are right though that plenty of providers reject it as being a voip number.
Ah... I sense a very lucrative, low-ethics business model in providing "cheap one-time virtual [phone] numbers" to be used for security-sensitive purposes.
Unfortunately, others have already beat you to it.

For example, https://cheapglobalsms.com/

I went a slightly different route --- an old spare phone with Ultra Mobile PayGo prepaid SIM. For $3 per month you get 100 minutes of voice, 100 texts and 100 MB data per month.

The reason for this is that some security providers throw a little kink in the works by actually making a call to verify your number on sign-up.