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Beyond the KYC requirements in 200 countries that make phone number based systems useless for those in high risk situations... They have other less obvious prob
by lrvick 6y ago
Beyond the KYC requirements in 200 countries that make phone number based systems useless for those in high risk situations... They have other less obvious problems.
Today with a phone number you can:
1. Port it, steal 2FA and password resets, take over critical accounts that don't allow alternate 2FA (happened to two friends of mine)
2. Pay first party or shady second party bounty hunter cell carrier APIs to get current GPS location on a number.
I do not even have a cell carrier anymore for these reasons, social consequences be damned.
- Forbo 6y agoYou can set a PIN in Signal to protect against SIM swap attacks.
- lrvick 6y agoThat won't stop contacts that now know your phone number from swapping you anyway to compromise other services that use SMS for 2FA. My whole point is revealing cell numbers you rely on to strangers is a bad call. Being forced to do it by baking them into a chat protocol is idiotic.