> For the high barrier cost of $5. Wow, such security. Bravo folks.
$5 is at least 5x the cost of a voip number. I'm not a bank, but if I'm spending money to verify you control a number, I feel better when you (or someone else) has spent $5 on the number than if it was $1 or less.
"... but if I'm spending money to verify you control a number, I feel better when you (or someone else) has spent $5 ..."
This is exactly it.
All of these auth mechanisms that tie back to "real" phone numbers and other aspects of "real identity" are not for you - they are not for your security.
These companies have a brutal, unrelenting scam/spam problem that they have no idea how to solve and so the best they can do is just throw sand in the gears.
So, when twilio (for instance) refuses to let you 2FA with anything other than tracing back to a real mobile SIM[1] (how ironic ...) it is not to help you - it is designed to slow down abusers.
[1] The "authy" workflow is still backstopped by a mobile SIM.
>All of these auth mechanisms that tie back to "real" phone numbers and other aspects of "real identity" are not for you - they are not for your security.
>These companies have a brutal, unrelenting scam/spam problem that they have no idea how to solve and so the best they can do is just throw sand in the gears.
Sure does a great job for all the various online social media places that ostensibly have nothing to do with transacting money, still want my phone number, and still get overrun with spam and (promotion of) scams....
It's a whole bunch of tradeoffs; requiring a working, non-voip phone number does raise the cost for abusers, but it's not enough to make spam unprofitable.
Requiring a deposit would be more direct, but administration of deposits would be a lot of work, and you have an uphill battle to convince users to pay anything, and even if they want to pay, accepting money is hard. And then after all that, some abusers will use your service to check their stolen credit cards.
Also, that is clearly a workaround that took some research to do. Aka you’re probably in the top 1% of the population from a ‘figuring out workarounds’ perspective.
VoIP is so well known (and automated) to do, even at $.10, it would be a magnitude easier to do.
Banks are always slow, and behind the times - because they are risk adverse. That has pros and cons.
I still have about $15 of international calling credit on a GV number I hardly use anymore with no option of transferring or using that balance on a different platform like Google's Play store.
$5 is at least 5x the cost of a voip number. I'm not a bank, but if I'm spending money to verify you control a number, I feel better when you (or someone else) has spent $5 on the number than if it was $1 or less.