zlacker

Verifying phone number is one of the last things which is still effective when fighting against bot registrations. Alternative is to ask money for registration.

Here is idea for hacker news crowd: make service which is a proxy for phone number validation: user needs to validate his phone number once in that app and any other 3rd-party service can ask this app for security code which confirms phone number ownership. We use something similar by offloading phone number confirmation via Telegram bot. Also this proxy service could optionally offload management of "bad" phone numbers used by spammers and add other protections

>>maline+(OP)
> Alternative is to ask money for registration.

I'm 100% ok with this. I have the choice of using a Visa/MC gift card I bought with cash. Same as I can do with Netflix. Better than linking a unique ID I use everywhere else.

I think what bugs me the most is that there's no direct need for the phone. It's reasonable to give my phone number to a doctor's office because I need to hear from them over the phone.

>>maline+(OP)
Nice idea, I hope somebody builds it. Signal just showed that they're spending $6 mil/year for verifying phone numbers.

>>maline+(OP)
KeyBase could have been that service. I really wish they'd stayed focused on identification rather than crypto wallets and chat.

>>zone41+o3
That's why we offloaded phone validation to Telegram - it is too costly to send SMS in other countries than our home market and spammers are finding ways to get phone numbers for free from different VoIP providers. We need to implement complicated SMS sending limit logic to avoid abuse

>>grpt+z1
> I have the choice of using a Visa/MC gift card I bought with cash.

Technically you can also pay for a burner service to get temporary phone numbers to receive SMSs for registering to services. Can’t attest if any of them are good or trustworthy. I recently looked into it but everything I found was a subscription and/or shady looking.