As the tittle sais, i was trying to create an instagram account and it is not possible without a phone number. Same with discord. Obviously i dont want to provide mine. Any working solutions to bypass this? not looking for alternative private service, i already use them.

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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    9 months ago

    My advice would be: don’t. Either get a second SIM you use for account registration, or seek alternative services.

    People found ways to bypass these requirements for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and a bunch of other services. Eventually the services assume everyone has a phone number attached (because the bypasses should’ve been impossible in the first place) and people got locked out of accounts. If you use a service to forward text messages just for registration and nothing else, that number will soon be reassigned to someone else; that other person can either “recover” your account or you can get hit with a mass ban when eventually the 100th person to use that phone number registers a bunch of spam bots.

    If you trust your friends, you could set up a shared phone number your friends/family gets to use. For small amount of accounts, this should help your privacy without risking mass bans. This can be done through VoIP providers, or probably through some dedicated services.

    • Overzeetop@beehaw.org
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      9 months ago

      A second sim is the only options for some. Either ChatGPT or one of those requires a real-world mobile number. Anything on a VoIP is blacklisted. I literally can’t sign up for it or a couple other oddball services (like the Dunkin’ app*) because I refuse to divulge my carrier number to anyone but my family and 2-3 close friends. I have a (former) mobile number and two former landline numbers on VoIP that are my real, active numbers but some services simply refuse to use them.

      * I’d use my freebie backup sim for registration, but many use that # as their required+sole 2FA “security“ so signing up with it is useless as I’d have to use that phone every time I interacted. Maybe it’s time to look into eSIMs.

      • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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        9 months ago

        Cheap VoIP definitely won’t work, but there are business VoIP providers that don’t get abused by spam bots because of the price. They’ll work. Google Fi and other such combined real numbers should also work.

        If getting the second number is easy or affordable, it’s probably been blacklisted, because scammers will abuse those services. That’s the whole reason you need to provide a phone number in the first place, companies want proof that you have something that’s difficult to get a whole bunch of to prevent spam accounts.

        • hulemy@ani.social
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          9 months ago

          Where I’m from you can buy a prepaid SIM card at a gas station which works just fine

        • Overzeetop@beehaw.org
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          9 months ago

          All my main numbers VoIP are Google. I’ve got two others at a large (Canadian, iirc) provider.

      • jet@hackertalks.com
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        9 months ago

        You just need a number that doesn’t show up as VoIP, it doesn’t actually need to be a SIM card. So if you have a Google fi number, you can use Google messages to access it over the web, even when the phone is off. Because when Carriers look the number up it doesn’t come over as VoIP it shows up as an actual mobile number.

        You can get numbers from twilio in countries that don’t report voip status. That also works.

        If you need a number in a country that does report VoIP status, you can use the phone number providers I posted in a different comment in this thread, to get a temporary number that is not VoIP, and receive your SMS verification