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Comment by silversmith | Hacker News Reader

Curious, why is SMS-based auth a downside in your opinion? I prefer to use SMS-based 2FA where available, as you can always pop the sim card into whatever device you have on hand and receive the code. As opposed to smartphone app, where you are tied to a particular device being available and in working order.

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> Curious, why is SMS-based auth a downside in your opinion?

If I go 40 miles south I'm in ( the Republic of ) Ireland and can't receive SMS.

There have been quite a few cases where malicious actors have been able to convince phone companies to forward sms messages to other numbers via social engineering to defeat this type of 2FA.

Additionally, it requires an active phone number, which may not be available to you in general or temporarily.

Airplanes are a big one for me as a frequent traveler. Every plane has wifi but you can't receive SMS. If my previous cookie expired or the site thinks the plane's IP is new and strange, then I might have no way to sign in from the air.

How much tweeting do you do on an average flight?

Reading tweets is perfect for a flight, it's a never-ending stream of entertaining information that doesn't require a lot of concentration.

It's possible for an attacker to intercept the SMS based 2FA http://news.softpedia.com/news/ss7-attack-leaves-whatsapp-an...

Try spending a bit of time traveling. I've been on the road for almost a year. My phone number changes every month or two (or more depending on if I'm buying new tourist SIMs everywhere I go).

No phone network for me why I go back to my parents place so it's complicated.

Nobody else has mentioned this, so maybe I'm an odd-ball, but I don't like giving out my phone number to ad-based services, especially social media sites. What do they do with that information?

It feels like data collection veiled in security. Giving out more personal information is the exact opposite of everything I've learned about privacy and security.

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