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You raise 2 points. First is traveling quite a bit with poor cell signal. This one is unfortunate especially with banks that have no alternative 2fa other than
by irjustin 8y ago
You raise 2 points.
First is traveling quite a bit with poor cell signal. This one is unfortunate especially with banks that have no alternative 2fa other than a phone based OTP.
Why phone? I would believe it's the one thing that near ubiquitous that has a very low barrier to entry. I never had to train my mother how to use OTP when it's an SMS. If she was required to use google authenticator, I'd probably get a phone call every time she had to login.
As for "phone numbers are a horrible identifier" I would say it is "secure enough" for many scenarios.
Typically 2fa systems require a bad actor to have both a password and a physical device.
To be pedantic, the OTP is not considered an identifier, but a password that requires a physical device.
The barrier of a bad actor having both my PW and my device (as a PW) is supposed to raise it high enough that it's unrealistic. Obviously this doesn't work 100% of the time, because phishing and social engineering.
So, sure my device can change hands, but it is unlikely to have changed hands AND that same person has my password AND they are a bad actor.
I live overseas (US expat). To get around many OTPs from US based services I use: https://anveo.com/ https://anveo.com/. Google Voice cannot do shortcode SMS for places like Bank of America. The website looks like it was built in 1995, but it's effective.
- rubito 8y agoYou are an immigrant, not an expat.
- jedberg 8y agoI suspect you're trying to fight the "white people are expats brown people are immigrants" stereotype, which is noble. But there is a good argument to be made that Americans are unique in the sense that we are still taxed by America when we leave, so we need a word that describes Americans living abroad.
- stingraycharles 8y agoI didn't realize that Americans were the only people that were called expats?
- sunir 8y agoThey aren’t. This thread is weird.
- Glucide 8y agoNot all Americans are white either...
- jedberg 8y agoIn fact that majority of them are not. But my point was that this movement to get rid of the distinction is kind of pointless.
- coyled 8y ago> Google Voice cannot do shortcode SMS for places like Bank of America. This is an important point for OP to consider. Twilio definitely can't receive SMS from US short codes[1]. When my number was at Google Voice I thought it could receive messages from short codes, at least in the recent past, but I ported it out so I can't test. [1] -- https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223181668-Can-Twilio-numbers-receive-SMS-from-a-short-code- https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223181668-Can-T...
- slow_donkey 8y agoDon't know about BOA, but I've never had a problem receiving verification codes on my voice number which is my daily driver.
- chungleong 8y agoOh man, I wish I had seen this thread earlier. I've been trying to get Capital One to send text to a Skype number to no avail. Then my card got swallowed by an ATM.