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this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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Privacy Guides
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Depending on your threat model, your best bet would probably be to purchase a burner phone at Walmart or something with cash. Then only use the phone for verification purposes.
I couldnt find any sim cards that didnt require a CC to activate. I brought one that came loaded with $40 and still asked for a CC to activate which sucked. My threat model is not existent I just believe think every service I sign up to needs to know who I am.
Yes. That's it. They want to know you're a person.
It prevents a lot of scammers and only a few "privacy enthusiasts" are hurt.
It sucks that privacy enthusiasts have to mix with actual criminals trying to hide.
How else would you propose they cheaply confirm that you're a person? Get a picture of your ID card? That's more invasive and unnecessary.
There are more modern methods that will identify you without a phone number. In the near future you will not need to enter a 6 digit code. Your phone will be able to be identified by its sim card and location (even if you have GPS off). Do you like that more or less than giving your phone number and receiving a text?
My issue isnt them texting my number and seeing if im a human. I dont like that they store my phone number and email because if I use my phone number and a random email on 1 site and my phone number and a random email on another site I can be tracked via my phone number in the dataset that these sites sell.
Yup. Exactly this. Telephony is reasonably good (but not great) as a way to filter out the minority of high-risk users. You can learn a lot about a phone number through well-known resources. VeriSign's business is booming for a reason.
There's a list of credit card test numbers that you can try to activate the account with.
Not sure about SIM cards but you can still use cash to buy prepaid phones along with an amount of minutes/text to activate. Like the kind of prepaid phones that you you see the vendors sell x minutes/text/data. e.g. I've never been asked for a credit card to buy a Tracfone. Some places like Best Buy will ask you for other information to sell it but none of it needs to be real (ironically Best Buy asks for a phone number to buy a prepaid phone, LOL). You do need to set up a Tracfone account online to actually activate a phone + plan, not sure about the other prepaid vendors.
Have you tried prepaid sim cards?