Ask HN: Why are phone numbers considered a secure personal identifier?

I travel quite a bit and change phone numbers often. Most of the time when I am traveling I am in locations that have poor or nonexistent cellular service.

This often causes problems with services (Paypal, banking apps, messangers, etc.) due to my inability use two factor auth and text-message based confirmation messages.

It seems to me that phone numbers are a horrible identifier due to the way they can be transferred between users of a carrier. Services like Ting have made short term numbers easy to use, and I often get two-factor auth messages from previous users of a number.

Is this purely a business case for data mining, or is there a legitimate security reason for relying on something as ephemeral as a phone number for critical identification mechanisms?

I have debated using Twilio to create my own number pool of international numbers and a way to check my messages via a web portal instead of relying on messaging. Are there any current apps / services that already do this effectively?

---

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19865987

Points: 10

# Comments: 2

from Hacker News: Front Page http://bit.ly/2LvV1Ii
via