About the SMS verification stuff...

in Help & Questions

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heatherm19 • 11 May 2023 at 5:31 AM

So, I was poking through the blog and realized it's been a full year since the SMS-verification and formally linking mains/sides was implemented. There were a *lot* of comments on that blog post with a lot of questions, many which mods said they were working on or still figuring out or whatever.

But some of those things still haven't been addressed, at least not formally (ie by blog post). It's completely possible that I've missed something, or that these things have been addressed behind the scenes, but I thought I'd go ahead an ask about a few things.

1. Was anything ever figured out for users who have *no access* to a cell phone, some alternate way to verify accounts and be able to do the Monthly Challenges and such? Of course if someone doesn't *want* to give their phone number for verification that's their choice, but it does feel unfair for those who just literally don't have access to a cell phone to be shut out of features. I know there was mentions of using an online phone thing like GoogleVoice but apparently that had issues?

2. This is one I was personally concerned about, is there or will there be a way to change the phone number associated with your accounts?
Okay I just double-checked an apparently there *is* a way to change the phone number associated with your accounts, but it's pretty convoluted and really unnecessarily complicated. So now my question becomes, will there ever be an easier way? Given that Eggcave has our phone number and we already get SMS messages each month and that's apparently sufficient to verify it's us, it feels *really* unnecessary to basically have to start from scratch, unlinking all accounts and putting the new phone number and having to relink all accounts... Why so complicated? (In my mind it seems like we should be able to use the SMS verification feature for this, if we still have access to the old phone at the moment...)

In general, it would be nice to have a blog post update on this feature and anything that's been fixed or figured out, given how huge a deal it was when it was announced.

(Please excuse any typos, keyboard dying...)

@Ian @mastergemma @Orderedchaos

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snowywinter • 13 May 2023 at 10:41 PM

just a little bump as I know some people were asking about these things recently. (via PMs, wall conversations, etc.)

I will note that I'm using the Google Voice option as my own cell phone situation is so convoluted. It's been working fine. (Other than the period where I didn't verify and it went inactive and I had to go through that kerfuffle getting it back.)
(no idea how well it works for those with a landline though. But I just read the text message for verification on the desktop version anyhow. I only needed the phone number for setting up Voice.)

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raccoon • 14 May 2023 at 12:04 AM

Bump for awareness!

I've personally had no issues with SMS verification but there are definitely things that are affecting other users that should be addressed.

Deleted • 27 November 2023 at 3:09 PM

@Ian

Bump for awareness!

After a whole year, no alternative was offered and people that don't want to share sensitive privacy data on this site or that don't have a cell phone are still left behind and denied the opportunity of partecipating in dailies. As I stated one year ago, 2FA should be OPTIONAL. Or at least give people the opportunity to use apps like 2FAs or link via email instead of phone.

Please just at least let us know If an alternative *will* be implemented. I stopped playing on here for a whole year because of that, and I'm quite frankly sad no solution has been given to leftover players still.

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