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Ask HN: What means to live without a phone?
Are there any tech people who use to live without a phone number? How do you manage your digital life and relationship with the Government?
- jocaal 3y agoWhen my current phone dies I won't be buying a new one. I will be buying an LTE smartwatch. That way I get to keep a number and will still be able to contact family and friends. > How do you manage your digital life The hope is that without a phone I won't be distracted by all the garbage that we call our digital lives. I already uninstalled all social media from my phone, including youtube. Sometimes I still get the urge to watch videos in my browser and obviously still lurke on HN. > relationship with the Government This stuff I do on the computer anyways. Hopefully the experiment will work and allow me to be more open in life in person. It is so weird seeing everyone on public transport glued to their phones.
- eimrine 3y ago> It is so weird seeing everyone on public transport glued to their phones. To get rid of smart phone is significantly easier than to get rid of phone number at all.
- Dutchie987 3y agoI haven't had a personal phone for a couple of years now. My employer gave me a phone for work related tasks and this phone is on during business hours and switched off otherwise. My 'digital life' is contained in my laptop and pretty minimal. There are a few blogs I read and I use the internet to search for information and for interacting with companies and the government. I try to minimize my online time. And I'm certainly no luddite. I develop software for a living. I just don't find even more screen time all that attractive anymore.
- eimrine 3y agoHow do you receive funds if you effectively can not even register a bank account? Do you know any programmer jobs which are payed by crypto or cash?
- Dutchie987 3y agoWhy would I need a phone to have a bank account? Of course I have a bank account, and I can do online banking on my laptop if needed.
- eimrine 3y agoIn my country if I enter the bank without phone, they can not do anything for me. Even if I have my passport and I am willing to recover something related to the bank account, they will not bother to do anything before the phone verification.
- ratg13 3y agoThey always have other options, you just chose the phone option because it’s what most people do.
- skydhash 3y agoIn my country (third world), all the banks forbid phone usage due to insecurity. They can be used by criminals and their accomplice to signal who takes money and how much. Everything is paper, cash, and Ids.
- retrac 3y ago> relationship with the Government I'm probably a bit of an oddball but I still do everything by paper. I print out forms, fill them out by hand, and mail them. It's how I do my taxes. It's how I renewed my public health insurance recently. If I run into an issue, I don't call but generally write a letter, and mail it to the ministry responsible. Few things are actually urgent enough for that to not be fast enough. I do have a phone number. But I avoid using the phone because I'm hard of hearing. And people tend to assume deaf relay calls are crank calls.
- gregjor 3y agoMaybe not the answer you're looking for, but I use VOIP numbers because I need a US number but I usually don't live in the US and don't have a US SIM card. Google Voice and Hushed are two options, you can find other services. I have found banks, credit card companies, and government agencies accept the VOIP number. I can't remember the last time I got called by any government agency, or the last time I had occasion to call one. A couple of services have refused to accept a VOIP number. Square Cash comes to mind, I just stopped using that. When traveling or living abroad I may get a local phone number, but since everyone I need to communicate with, including businesses, seem to use messaging apps like WhatsApp and Line I generally use those with wifi or a data-only SIM.
- LinuxBender 3y agoI can't think of a use case where a phone is or ever would be mandatory. I can walk into: - the banks I do business with and prefer this so they know my face. This also allows most accounts to be set read-only from the internet and to set additional security on ACH transfers that require me to be physically in the bank. - the DMV/courthouse. - the power company. - the trash company, so I can pet their dog. - I can mail a cashiers check to the IRS, though it makes me uncomfortable to do so because there is no receipt beyond delivery and I just have to wait and see if they send me a letter, but it is still an option. It would be nice if the USPS had a kiosk for this. Anything else is entirely optional for me, or what some might call "nice to have". I do have the Mumla app so I can use my own self hosted uMurmur server but that is a nice to have. For driving in strange places I have a couple GPS map systems that I update at home and they just use GPS, no cell networks. I do have to remember to print out my proof of insurance and keep copies in the vehicle.
- sourcecodeplz 3y agoI think nowadays it is selfish to live without a phone. Your loved ones need to have a way to contact you fast if they need you.