This is my old account that I just logged in today. Just joined a server and Discord asked for email verification. Okay, that’s not hard, thankfully Discord doesn’t restrict email to only big providers. But then suddenly DIscord asked to verify by phone number, because “something is out of ordinary”. What’s out of ordinary from that??? Joining a server > Discord asks to verify > I verify.
I was losing my mind seeing people suggesting moving to Discord when Rexxit happened. Like WTF, it’s even worse than Reddit. Non-indexable content, worse privacy, needing account just to access the said content, etc.
I really hate how services nowadays require your phone number just to use their service. Unfortunately most people just don’t care of privacy, thanks to “I have nothing to hide” mindset.
Actually a big problem. Companies think it simply means adding another layer where user proves they’re human (not bots) and also can’t be ‘faked easily’.
I hate it. It has fundamental issues like:
- geographical privacy breach
- some countries have strict ID req for phone numbers
- sms can be intercepted by social engineering alone
- there are apps and sites providing fake numbers, so…
Being generous, it’s an extra layer of annoyance to deter spammers. Big places like Discord won’t accept numbers from simple google searches. In my case, I actually paid an sms verification website so discord could “knew I was on $CheapCountry and bought a sim card”, lol.
And seriously, fuck discord and fuck everyone thinking chats can replace forums. It fucking doesn’t, goddamn people.
Yeah phone number kinda sucks here ever since it requires your govt. ID just to register. Back then I could just buy any random number and activate it.
I actually paid an sms verification website
What service did you use? I’m looking for similar service but I don’t trust recommendation from articles enough.
In my case it was smspva. A word of caution, the prices listed are cheap, but they require depositing 5 USD into your account first (I used bitcoin). Only after that you can spend it on phone numbers to receive sms messages into. I used whatever the cheapest european number there was to register discord and google accounts. Sometimes it was straightforward, other times it took 2-3 times cycling through to find the right number, in bad days it wouldn’t work at all (Google is the worst personally speaking). The website didn’t charge me for using a failed number, so there’s that.
Err… is it smspva.com or .eu? Also the .com domain throws an error certificate warning on my browser…
It’s the smspva.com site. Gotta admit the site does look sketchy. Dunno about the cert issue, but I warn you. I haven’t been there for a year and I did all my transactions in TorBrowser plus bitcoin back then.
I hope one day phone aliasing services become more widespread like email aliases because this is getting out of hand.
I actively avoid services which require phone verification; however, there are services which allow you to fake it, like crypton.sh which is a paid service where you can buy phone numbers (both anonymously with cryptocurrency and with credit/debit card). I’ve used it in the past, when phone numbers are unavoidable and for one reason or another I have to use the software. Haven’t had to use it in many years though.
Thanks for that link. I’ve been looking for that kind of service but I don’t trust the websites that show up in search engine’s top results.
Also considered using that service. How was it when you used it? I ended up using something else since it was too expensive and I didn’t need a persistent number.
It works exactly like how I wanted it to work, you get (a) number(s) that people can text you from and you have a little GUI to see all your received texts. It’s pretty much exactly what you expect, not many extra bells and whistles, but you don’t really need there to be.
They should really just use captchas instead
There are captchas actually, which I’d filled 3 times. First one when I just logged in, second one when I was forced to change my username, and last one when I joined a server.
Captchas are even easier to get around, and when a spammer buys a bunch of VOIP numbers there’s a pattern that can be blocked/banned whereas if they pay some workers a few bucks to solve a few thousand captchas there’s not exactly anything as identifiable there.
