What I suggest if you have the opportunity to go anywhere south of the USA is buying a 2$ claro SIM chip and putting 2$ on it at least once every 3 months or so in order to maintain it (Can even maintain payments over the internet as long as you can understand the Spanish website). This makes the monthly cost around 66 cents a month/$7.92 a year for an SMS verification mule, and it will receive texts anywhere that has GSM band 1 without having to activate roaming or anything expensive like that.
Is there a way to automate this? I would be afraid of forgetting to top it up and then having the whole thing fall apart. Personally, it is worth $5/mo to me (Tello's cheapest plan: no data, 500 voice minutes, unlimited text) to not have to deal with manual payments.
> I find it hard to justify paying $8/month for a cellphone plan because others don't do their homework.
Whenever I hear things like this, I like to remind people that they should be most concerned about outcomes, not about what satisfies their indignance. I agree that this situation is ridiculous, but being mad about it isn't going to change the state of the world. If you're genuinely worried about giving out your primary phone number for 2FA or account verification purposes, then this is a solution for you. Being pissed at companies for leaking data is not a solution.
Yes, but because so many others don't do their homework, you have to take it upon yourself to protect yourself. $8/month does seem like a stupid fee to pay, but for those willing to do it, it isn't that much. Those kinds of companies may even have a pay for 12 months in advance and it get a lower rate.
My first thought was "paying for a second SIM just for that sounds like a pain", but then I read to the end and saw that you're using a service for $8/mo. Had no idea such a thing existed. I clicked through their plans, and it looks like you can reduce that down to $5/mo if you ditch the data plan and select 100 voice minutes / unlimited text. I figure for such a device, you can just connect it to wifi, and don't need a data plan.
I guess it's nice to have the backup, though, in case the local internet connection goes down. The 500MB/mo plan bumps it to just $6/mo.
I'm a fan of US Mobile personally. They let you make a custom plan that has ONLY sms, so you don't pay for what you don't need. Can also add minutes at will for $1. Bonus of choosing the underlying carrier.
you can provision in API/IP-enabled "mobile" number through a provider like Twilio or competitors, do everything in software (or do nothing regarding custom software and just enable SMS forwarding in the provider's UI), and pay fractions of pennies per SMS, plus a monthly fee for the number like $1.50.
See my comments elsewhere in thread, but a "VOIP" number is a ridiculously tiny corner case in the world of telco, hence lack of support.
I wish this were the case - believe me, I have tried many different API provided phone number endpoints and they are discriminated against by banks, google, etc.
In fact, twilio even started offering special numbers that are flagged and "vouched for" that should be treated as non-VOIP ... but they aren't.
If you really need it to work, it needs to be a number from a physical SIM card.
Unfortunately, many services have started blocking any number not currently associated with AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon or a major regional carrier. Even legitimate 'mobile' numbers from tiny carriers and MVNOs are getting blocked.
Nope. I had a "burner" voip used for providing to retailers/etc who wanted a phone number for no reason. I would migrate the number yearly. Unfortunately those are now rejected.
Modern phones have overcharge protection, as long as that's in tact (no reason to think it wouldn't be), it'll be completely fine. The worst that might happen is your battery capacity will degrade slightly faster than it would otherwise.