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> Supposedly, using the QR code on the smartphone triggers an SMS sent from your phone to Google in order to verify your phone number. Does anyone have a bette
by Aurornis 6mo ago
> Supposedly, using the QR code on the smartphone triggers an SMS sent from your phone to Google in order to verify your phone number.
Does anyone have a better source of information than this one forum comment from someone who thinks scanning a QR code is enough to get your phone to send a text message?
EDIT: It’s just an SMS URI. It doesn’t automatically send anything, just opens a text message for you to send.
This is just the old phone number verification with a QR code convenience method.
- noitpmeder 6mo agoI think it's probably enough to get your phone to open your texting app with a pre populated number and message body, then all the user needs to do is hit send.
- yawnr 6mo agoIt probably opens a prefilled text message and the user still has to hit send. That's the only API I know on iOS anyway.
- philajan 6mo agoCan confirm this is what scanning the QR code does. I just went through this to get my Google dev account verified.
- gruez 6mo agohttps://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5724#section-2 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5724#section-2
- goldenarm 6mo agoRegarding how easy simswap is in 2026, it's dangerously stupid from Google to rely on SMS
- cute_boi 6mo agoI don't know why verizon etc.. don't charge like $0.25 cents per sms. Then these provider would stop sending too many sms.
- deltoidmaximus 6mo agoI recall reading that twitter was getting "scammed" because there were some phone services that cost money to receive texts (and possibly some of it was being passed on to the customer of said phone service) and they were getting spammed with phone verifications to get the payouts. I guess when twitter extorts your phone number out of you under false security pretenses and then uses it for advertising that's legit but if some one tries to a get a cut for themselves it's a big problem. It occurs to me this "force you to send the sms" might be a way to avoid exactly this sort of thing.
- xp84 6mo agoThey used to do just that, though people could pay about $25-30 (in like, 2008 dollars! So that’s closer to $47 today) for ‘unlimited text plans’. I know you mean charge just these bulk senders, but if they didn’t charge consumers a similar rate too, whoever wants to spam SMS can just set up farms of consumer SIMs and dump them onto the network that way. In fact, they already do this.
- qingcharles 6mo agoI wish it was. I've looked everywhere for several years for anyone offering this service so I can get into my 2004 Google account that they enabled SMS 2FA on one day, without any notice, but it has the wrong phone number. I have the username, password and the recovery email address is set to another I own too, but without the SMS code I'm hosed.
- hellojesus 6mo agoYou should just determine which carrier hosts the phone number and then go get a job there as a customer service agent or store employee. You'll get full permissions to change accounts, so you'll be able to make the change, fix your gmail, then change it back. You probably risk some legal fallout though, so be cautious.
- qingcharles 6mo agoThis reminds me of the women who sleep with Meta employees to get their accounts unlocked. It's 2026, we gotta do what we gotta do to get our digital lives back.
- mghackerlady 6mo agoWhat happens when your phone can't do that? I use a flip phone. It can't scan QR codes despite having a camera
- tom1337 6mo agothen google has decided that you no longer should be able to use GMail (for now) and the internet (in the future)
- mghackerlady 6mo agoeh, they gave up on trying to control usenet and haven't touched gopher so I'll just go there
- Aurornis 6mo agoApparently it’s just an SMS URI. It’s not something specific to a phone. It’s just a convenient method to enter your phone number.
- croes 6mo agoTo enter their phone number because you sent an SMS to them. So if there are any costs for sending this SMS it’s on you.
- DANmode 6mo agoThere weren’t any infrastructure costs to sending the first SMS ever, there shouldn’t be any remaining for the consumer today unless you’re a real unfortunate soul.
- jeroenhd 6mo agoExchanging SMS messages with any sort of reliability (like not losing your messages when you go through a tunnel) requires running an SMSC. That costs money. Furthermore, carriers still charge each other for exchanging SMS traffic, though many of them just charge the difference rather than sending each other bills. This approach is quite costly if you're out of the country, though. Sending an SMS is hit and miss when roaming in foreign enough networks, and each SMS can cost you a significant amount for exchanging 10 characters. Even receiving SMS messages far away from home can cost you money, which is a pain if you have a relative that could never get used to modern messaging services.
- raincole 6mo agoBut isn't phone number verification usually works like... Google sends you a SMS, not the other way around?
- q0uaur 6mo agoyou see, in that case google has to pay, but flipping it like this makes the customers.. oh wait the product pay.
- TimByte 6mo agoThat clarification matters, but I don't think it makes the privacy concern disappear
- tardedmeme 6mo agoThe old method was for you to receive an SMS. Because it's easy to pay a phone farm 30 cents to receive an SMS now, they're changing it to sending. Phone farms will also adapt.
- extraduder_ire 6mo agoCan't you spoof or hide the "from" number in SMSs in a lot of countries? Like email, I'd expect recieving to be more secure since it uses hardware the user isn't in control of. There are free sites offering recieve-only SMS numbers, but they're almost universally at their rate limit for most services.