[Kronopath]

This is what I hate about apps and services using phone numbers as primary credentials. Phone numbers can and do change, so they're nowhere near as stable as e.g. a simple email address. I'm recently facing the situation where I may be moving in the near future, and when doing so I'm going to have to change my phone number to a local one in the place I'm moving to. I'm likely going to have to go through every account and app I have my phone number associated with and change it. (Unless there's a better option that I'm not aware of yet.)

[joshstrange]

> Unless there's a better option that I'm not aware of yet.

Keep your number? I love this XKCD on this [0]. I live in a different state that where I got my phone number and when I moved I just kept the number so I didn't have to go through the dog and pony show of updating it everywhere.

[0] https://xkcd.com/1129/

[Kronopath]

That's less useful when you're possibly moving to a different country.

[dublinben]

You can maintain a US telephone number for a few dollars a year by porting it to a VOIP or prepaid cell provider.

[joshstrange]

Agree 100%, that is one situation where this would not work. I apologize for having on my USA blinders :)

[wehadfun]

Wow thanks knew this was correct but never found any documentation.

[hrehhf]

In my experience, it seems like people with land-lines, e.g. private businesses, are less likely to make/return calls to a non-local number.

[joshstrange]

This is probably true as well as EVERY time I call Time Warner they redirect me to the wrong state's offices and it would confuse the person answering the call b/c they couldn't find my account. It got to the point that I would just start the call with that info "Yes my number is an Ohio number but I live in Kentucky, redirect me please". That said I don't think this has happened the last few times I've called. Maybe they got their redirection to take into account phone numbers tied to accounts to redirect instead of just area code.

[ecspike]

Could be a Silicon Valley thing where most aren't from here but most I know don't bat an eye with a non-local number.

[Someone1234]

Unfortunately people hate registration, and while there are alternatives that avoid registration (e.g. Facebook, Gmail, etc login) people hate those for other reasons (mostly spam/abuse).

Are phone numbers insecure? Sure, yes, absolutely. But too many companies have built their entire brand around not requiring registration, that is their USP (e.g. WhatsApp).

What Lyft should be doing at the absolute minimum is merging the phone number with the IMEI (or some other unique hardware ID) and only then allowing people to make purchases without re-entering the CC number.

It won't fix the problem of if your phone got stolen and someone made purchases with it. But it would stop phone number re-use related issues.

[azinman2]

What happens if you get a new phone?

[pbreit]

You go through a more rigorous process. This only happens once every year or two, you know.

[Someone1234]

Re-enter your credit card info.

[calbear81]

You keep your same number and once you resync your phone with a backup, all your apps and data should transfer right over.

[declan]

>This is what I hate about apps and services using phone numbers as primary credentials. Phone numbers can and do change, so they're nowhere near as stable as e.g. a simple email address.

Well put. I can think of a half-dozen phone numbers I used to have that have presumably been reused. Though even email addresses can be reused: Yahoo announced in 2013 it was doing this.

From a HN app/service-development perspective, all of these approaches have tradeoffs. Facebook login gives you a scoped unique ID with a low probability of reuse (perhaps zero, I can't recall what the docs say), but some folks don't like logging in with FB or don't have a FB account at all.

[leephillips]

The better option is Google Voice: a permanent number that you can forward to any temporary cell number you want.

[joshstrange]

I would agree but GV seems to be a forgotten product and I'm not going to tie something as important as my phone number to something Google might shut down on a whim.

[ianburrell]

Google has recently integrated Google Voice into Hangouts. They probably won't update and may deprecate the Google Voice site and apps. They have also been pushing phone calls from Hangouts. My suspicion is that Google will open up the usage of virtual phone numbers in Hangouts.

[leephillips]

I don't think that's going to happen. GV has been around since 2009 - I got my number then and it's been great. This is not Reader - several million people and businesses have GV numbers. Of course it can happen, and there may be other reasons you might not want Google to handle your phone calls, but I estimate the probability of Google just shutting this down as pretty small.

[plorkyeran]

At worst you'll have to transfer your number to some other service. While I wouldn't be shocked by Google shutting down Voice, I would be shocked if it just abruptly vanished one day with no warning.

[wiredfool]

I've got GV -- on a number I've had since before they bought Gizmo and before whatever it was before that turned into gizmo.

My backup plan at this point is probably a 'quick' reimplementation of the bits of GV that I use in Twilio.

[Someone1234]

A lot of apps auto-detect your phone number. Not sure if there is a way of sending the Google Voice number to the apps or having your phone think that is your number (normally the network defines it).

[leephillips]

On Android you can set up the phone to send the GV number as your caller-ID. So when calling Lyft they should see your GV number, which will never get associated with anyone else.

EDIT: As Someone1234 points out, however, caller-ID might be irrelevant, and having GV might not help. Another reason to be very selective about what apps you install.

[Someone1234]

Right, but most apps don't "call up" anything. They just gather your phone number using the OS's APIs and then send it via HTTPS/JSON. Caller ID would play no part in that process.