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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

I've thought about using this approach, my concern is that SMS is not always "instant". I've had messages take up to 30 minutes to get delivered; it probably does not happen often but it wouldn't take too many occurrences of having to wait for a message on my phone before i'd get irritated.

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> or generated on an application you can install on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device

It seems it's a bit like a RSA fob as an app.. Very cool, and a concept that could be expanded. Basically, you could sell whitelabel apps and the backend service to websites that wants two-factor.

In fact, RSA already makes that product: http://www.rsa.com/node.aspx?id=1313

Now an equivalent one-time passcode mobile app is available as a free open source app: http://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/

(Disclaimer: This was my project at Google.)

From my limited experience, I think you can pay to have these types of SMS prioritised.

I work at an SMS aggregator, and I've never heard of such a thing. SMS are pretty speedy, unless something goes wrong and they get wedged, in which case priority messages wouldn't help you anyway.

My limited experience is unfortunately based on online banking: my bank can send me a tan sms faster than anything I've seen.

That's interesting. Which country/networks, and is it the sender or the recipient who can prioritise?

I can do that with the api for clickatell.com.

At least for wealthier companies, the iPhone/BB/Android apps solves that problem.

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