Hacker News Reader

Comment by wnevets | Hacker News Reader

> But there's still a large number of sites and services that rely on SMS.

I avoid using my actual phone number whenever possible and use a Google Voice number. Hacking Google Voice would require hacking my actual Google account instead of just tricking someone at the phone company.

View on HN

Bingo. Personal phone number for only friends and family. Google voice number from a nearby area code for literally everything else. It's a little more secure than my carrier.

And as an added bonus, I can automatically send all incoming google voice calls to voicemail and not have to worry about missing a family emergency. If I get a phone call on my actual cell number, it's almost guaranteed to be someone I know closely.

> I avoid using my actual phone number whenever possible and use a Google Voice number.

I do too. Sadly there are a number of sites/orgs that require you to use a mobile number. I don't really understand why.

Same here, but note that a lot of banks have now started to look at the underlying carrier and often deny the use 'voip-like' services such as GV.

why do you think that? Presumably Google Voice uses a phone company downstream, which means if that company is hacked they can reassign your number to someone else and thus you have the classic SIM jacking attack.

Which phone company does the hacker call to trick into believing they are Google?

they pay-off / trick a T-Mobile employee into re-assigning your Google Voice number to them. It's happened before with Google Fi, but I haven't seen any public information about this happening with Google Voice (yet)

> they pay-off / trick a T-Mobile employee into re-assigning your Google Voice number to them.

Are you saying the Google Voice phone number lock is useless and that any carrier can just steal Google Voice numbers regardless of the lock status?

here is a link to a report of that happening to a Google Fi customer:

https://old.reddit.com/r/GoogleFi/comments/10pjtie/google_fi...

I don't work at Google and don't know if this is possible with Google Voice. However, Google Fi is their paid service, so I would assume that's the one they'd want to protect the most.

Google Fi has actual SIM cards and behaves like a regular carrier, Voice does not.

There arent any SIM cards to be hijacked with Voice because it don't provide cell service.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com