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> a proprietary, insecure, easy to lose passport

> 15 years after Skype

I agree with your general sentiment, but the two phrases I picked out are where you have it backward. Phone numbers are not proprietary. They're difficult to move, but if you're a customer with one phone company you can call a customer of a different phone company using a phone number.

Skype is proprietary. It belongs to a single company. Customers of Skype or Facetime or Slack or Hangout cannot simply contact each other across services.

Yes, phone numbers need to be replaced. They need to be replaced by an open solution, not a proprietary solution like Skype.

You do not own the phone number, your phone company does, and the implementation is a chip that you can physically "own" but can't control or know what happens inside.

> conspiracy designed for the solely purpose of mocking the user

slightly paraphrasing Hanlon's razor: don't attribute to a conspiracy that which is adequately explained by stupidity

> Seriously, I would do everything I can to destroy fucking phone numbers, but I have no idea how can we stop this madness.

I assume throwing away your phone isn't a solution for most people who grew up with one. Works for me though. :)

Well, I don't have a phone - have never had a mobile phone. So..I have other problems instead I guess. But not that one.

same, i don't have a phone number. my biggest issue is with one of my two banks, but the other one works just fine without any cellphone.

Hi there! I thought it was just me. I do have a couple of older friends aged 70+ without mobiles, but that's all I knew of. :-)

hi! indeed, i don't know many other people without a cellphone, but it's not like I ask every time. there should be dozens of us, dozens.

Do you know low tech magazine? https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/

Hehehe. No I didn't, thanks, looks fascinating.

As far as I can see the vast majority of "serious" registration schemes on the net have a phone number field which is mandatory to fill in. Mobile phone even, in some cases. You're not allowed to not have one. Soon you'll have men in black asking you what you're up to if you don't have one.

seconded :) .. it's the best you can do for your mental health and actually "stay connected" for real!

Before switching to Linux I thought it would be hard to live without Windows. it wasn't.

Before purging Facebook and Twitter from my life I thought it would be inconvenient to live without them, it isn't.

Living without a phone looks inconvenient, but I think I'm going to try it some time this year.

anti-spam, they said... and you also have this (vomit),

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18085580

Yes Facebook is using your 2FA phone number to target you with ads

> making phone numbers a passport of sorts (a proprietary, insecure, easy to lose passport, over which you have basically no control)

Phones are an imperfect solution for two-factor authentication but nothing else is as widely available.

There are also very well-supported ways to recover access to your phone number if the physical device is lost or stolen: Contact your phone company, present legal ID and get a new sim card.

pro tip: Telegram requires a phone number for registration, but then you don't need a phone to use it. You can link an account to a burner phone and then you can set up a password. With that password, even if the phone number get reassigned, they can't have access to your account.

if security is a concern don't use Telegram :)

Telegram is way safer than using a cellphone :)

But yeah, Telegram shouldn't be used for really sensitive stuff.

> With that password, even if the phone number get reassigned, they can't have access to your account.

I wonder what happens if you acquire that phone number and decide to make it your main one. Hopefully support staff have a way of checking if the old user's active, and asking them to change their account to a number they actually have access to.

What do you suggest? Give everyone their own domain name? Phone numbers are more portable than third-party emails or logins to proprietary services like Skype. They can be moved from provider-to-provider.

I mean, why not? Doesn't even have to be a full domain name, even just assigning everyone their individual IPv6 address would work.