[shortcake27]

There is a specific issue with SMS that I hate more than any of the issues you mentioned - the state of roaming.

Because every company on the planet forces me to provide my phone number to auth me with SMS, I now need to pay for roaming to use this god-awful method of authentication I never signed up for. On top of the local sim card I still need to buy, because roaming is often throttled to unusable speeds.

But it gets better. If I break my phone, I can currently move my physical sim into a new device in a matter of seconds. No problem. But with Apple removing the physical sim, soon I’m going to be forced to switch to eSIM.

eSIM is marketed as more practical, yet in reality it is anything but. I’ve been following forums for many telcos in the UK and Australia to understand the problems people face with eSIM.

First of all, if it is even possible to provision a new eSIM, most telcos lock this behind SMS 2FA. So if you break your phone, you can’t log in to provision a new eSIM. Also, usually this needs to done using an app, which is often only available in the telco’s region. So if you live between countries, you’re again out of luck. Some telcos require you to visit a physical store to move an eSIM to a new device. Some telcos won’t provision a new eSIM electronically, requiring you to use a physical cardboard QR kit. And some telcos can only activate a new eSIM when the device is connected directly to their network, so even if you somehow managed to jump through all these hoops, you still wouldn’t be able to activate a new eSIM abroad.

So if you break your phone overseas, you either need to live without banking and a range of other services, or book an immediate flight back to your home country just to provision a new eSIM.

Calling this madness is an understatement. Any company forcing MFA must allow users to pick from a range of open standards.

[thaumasiotes]

> So if you break your phone overseas, you either need to live without banking and a range of other services, or book an immediate flight back to your home country just to provision a new eSIM.

I have these services connected to a Google Voice number.

[idontwantthis]

Not every service will let you use VoIP. Capital One for example.

[thaumasiotes]

Capital One is one of the services that I have connected to my Google Voice number.

[idontwantthis]

They wouldn’t let me activate a card with one. They wouldn’t even let me activate my card with a phone number that wasn’t the primary on a family plan.

[thaumasiotes]

I probably connected the number before their anti-voip policy was enacted. This is true in a number of places. They have no policy against using a voip number; they just hope you won't register one.

I might try a couple of things:

1. Call Capital One customer service and yell at them.

2. Go visit them in person somewhere and yell at them. Bring a phone that rings when they dial the number.

3. Register a carrier number with them, and then, behind Capital One's back, port that number to your Google Voice account.

> They wouldn’t let me activate a card with one.

You can activate a card by just going to the URL printed on the sticker attached to the card. No need to use any phone number.

[idontwantthis]

To the last point no you can’t.

I’m sure I could have figured it out eventually but once their proprietary id scanner rejected my passport I gave up and closed my account.

[0xDEADFED5]

i've been seeing more places rejecting VoIP numbers lately

[mindslight]

And if Google Voice doesn't work, there's also the "2FA Mule" technique: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28251107 . It costs a few bucks a month so the original rant is still valid, but at least you don't have to deal with roaming, mucking with your actually-mobile device, or getting your location spilled.

[azalemeth]

You can't get Google Voice if you're not a US Google user