> But 2FA via SMS is ubiquitous because of its ease of use. “Not everyone is running around with a smartphone. Some people still have dumb phones,” says Android security researcher Jon Sawyer. “If Google cut off 2FA via SMS, then everybody with a dumb phone would have no two-factor at all. So what’s worse — no two-factor or two-factor that is getting hacked?”
The thing is, SMS is worse than a reasonably good password. So it's a bit annoying that Google strongly encourages me to register my phone number with my gmail account for recovery.
And many services, including Google, make it difficult or impossible to enable TOTP without first registering a phone number. They really really push the SMS route. Brings up the average security level for the average person, I'm sure. Very annoying for me.