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Comment by slivanes | Hacker News Reader

I remember reading somewhere that Google Voice numbers cannot be ported - and are useful in having them set as your 2FA for email accounts etc. Is that still correct?

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For UK numbers I can also recommend these guys: https://www.aa.net.uk/telecoms.html

Their technical support is actual tech support, with tech guys that won't take any bullshit, especially if you have 2FA (TOTP-based) on your account.

The numbers are not recognised as VoIP and will work with every single service (I have yet to find one that will fail). I believe they are partnered with a local carrier that does some magic (call forwarding to some internal number?) so from the outside they look just like any other mobile number from that carrier.

(no affiliation besides being a satisfied customer for years)

Except their text messages only appear to be processed every half hour or so... which makes it useless for 2FA most of the time (the only reason I went with them).

Strange - I get their texts immediately.

Which numbers are you using? 07 ones or 020?

07. Forwarded to email.

I ported one out last year, I had to make it portable from inside my Google Voice account (a quite poorly documented pain, actually), but that's still a much higher bar than your average cell carrier.

And since there is no google customer service, nobody can social engineer it out of you!

Google Voice is on track to be a core service in Gsuite, which has pretty impressive phone support in my experience.

I interacted with Google support (when it was called Google apps) for two things, the first one was I wanted to disable links in Gmail -- the support people couldn't understand what I wanted for about 30 minutes, then couldn't understand why I wanted it, then said it couldn't be done.

I don't remember what the second one was, but it ended with the support person agreeing it was a problem, but suggesting I post to product forum.

If that's amazing support, I'd rather rely on the normal channels: writing an angry blog post and posting it to HN, or suckering your smart friends into interviewing at Google and bribing them to fix your problems once they get there.

did you try to port it without marking it as portable in Google Voice? I would be interested to see if that flag actually matters.

I tried to port out in early 2017 without unlocking the number at GV and the receiving provider said the sending provider had rejected the port request.

Bank of America does not or is not able to send 2FA SMS to Google Voice numbers.

That's not true, I have both my Bank Of America and Merrill Edge accounts protected with 2FA using my Google Voice number, and it's been working fine for at least a couple years (when I switched to that method), I use both of them weekly receiving their authentication text via GV and never had a problem.

Interesting, I tried years ago and it didn't work, maybe it has changed. Good thing is BoA also emails 2FA codes, so don't need SMS anyway.

I ported my Google Voice number to T-mobile about 6 years ago, replacing my main number

Great decision as I got to reset my social graph - no services would try to auto-connect me with everyone from high school and college that had data dumped their contacts

10/10

Is it worth it though? Now you can't fully rely on your phone number for 2FA, T-mobile is one of the providers notoriously known for transferring numbers without asking too many information.

My daily number, not connected to any 2FA (for which I use Google Voice) is a T-mobile, and a couple years ago I bought a nano sim to replace a larger sim, and the call center operator transferred the number without me having to answer almost anything overly personal, I think they just asked for a PIN which I'd obviously forgotten and with some mild additional information it was reset right there. It was truly shocking, the old sim just got disconnected from the network instantly.

For 2FA via text, Google Voice is IMHO the only choice, by far.

And for social graph implications, on your google account you can choose to not be discoverable to other people via your phone number, and that includes the Google Voice number since it's explicitly listed there (of course I assume it doesn't work the other way around, which seems to be the thing you are bothered by, I'm usually worried about being discovered by others than being shown a list of people I might know).

totally worth it, that number can be used to create a new google voice number.

Offering SMS based one time codes - with no OTP protocol alternative - should be considered negligence of the legally sanctionable kind.

and finally who cares about your social graph on Google? Thats not the issue at alllll

Do you mean a brand new google voice number can/should be used for all 2fa smses?

I've ported one back out, you have to sign into your account and allow it.

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