“PayPal forcing me to have a cellphone to access my account” | Hacker News Reader

“PayPal forcing me to have a cellphone to access my account”

paypal-community.com

67 pointsaww_dang50 comments

The most annoying part of company support forums like this, other than the total lack of response from actual company representatives, is the bootlicking simps who show up in the replies to defend the company. What kind of person does this? What possible reward do they expect for defending the user-hostile decisions of multinational billion dollar corporations?

On the same note, what the hell is up with the cottage industry of volunteers on Microsoft’s community site who claim to be some self-assigned title?

answers.microsoft.com is an insufferable hive of scum and villainy where everyone cares about replying to your question but no one cares about answering your question. 10 times out of 10 you're better off walking outside and screaming your issue into the void then you are posting about it.

Also, microsoft.com's general propensity to hijack the back button with their login.microsoftonline.com redirects is just that annoying little cherry on top.

It’s so common that I have to believe someone somewhere is selling it as a path to a job, probably in foreign countries.

It used to be a potential route to Microsoft MVP too I believe.

Dare I ask what's a Microsoft MVP?

Minimum Viable Pawn

"sfc /scannow" sigh

I always wonder what purpose these sites serve. They often show up on search results when I'm trying to solve a problem and they're always full of non-answers. I don't even recall a single instance in which I was able to get a working solution from company community forums.

The reward is in the action itself, the feeling of elitism.

This got me too, they locked me out of my account with close to a thousand dollars. I tell people every chance I get to avoid PayPal, they're a horrible company. Most of the time I hear back, "Yeah I know."

So many companies are insisting on adding the extra vulnerability of sim-swapping.

I imagine on the aggregate level there might be less fraud? Or is it just the need to harvest more and more data? The way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised to see PayPal insist upon a mobile app install next.

Malicious bots have gotten sophisticated enough that SMS verification and velocity controls are one of the few ways to manage Sybil attacks. Device and IP based systems can’t cope with the onslaught.

We really need some smart card cryptographic mechanisms for those without a smart phone, similar to Estonia’s smart card digital ID system. Asking everyone to have a smart phone to be identity proofed is simply not reasonable.

I’ve always assumed bad actors buy SIM cards and mobile numbers in huge quantities. Isnt that a lot cheaper than having to buy devices?

Regardless, requiring phone numbers impacts a lot of real customers in a negative way.

The bad actors do buy SIM cards in large quantities and there are services that will rent out the numbers for SMS verification. It substantially raises the cost for someone that wants to register 100,000 fraudulent accounts without linking accounts based on phone numbers.

Some concert venues are requiring axs.com mobile app to show the ticket QR code for entry and parking. I found out after I had purchased tickets.

This is also true for all venues through Ticketmaster (which is probably over 2/3 of them). A couple years ago, they moved from static barcodes to live, rolling 2d barcodes that expire every 30 seconds. It does work pretty well to prevent duping/fraud, but it absolutely requires a phone to enter the venue.

Seems interesting that smartphones are so ubiquitous nowadays that companies are happier to just drop customers that don't have them than adjusting their business strategy. We seem to be moving towards a future where not having a smartphone is just as unthinkable as not having a bank account or electricity.

> We seem to be moving towards a future where not having a smartphone is just as unthinkable as not having a bank account or electricity.

When my current smartphone dies, I won't be replacing it with another smartphone. It will be interesting to see how much of an impact that will have on my ability to function in society.

My guess is that it won't be much of an impact beyond a decrease in convenience. Right now, it would only lock me out of using a few parking lots, my apartment building's laundromat, and a smattering of vending machines. I can live with that -- especially because I already do, since I will not install any app for that sort of nonsense.

Just so; in some cases we are already beyond the point where you need to be in some way wealthy or privileged in order to interact with a company beyond the basic automated phone and web-based interface.

Yet every so often I still hear someone (to be fair, not nearly as often as I used to) suggest that poor people (and sometimes refugees) having phones shows that they're undeserving of assistance, since they can clearly afford a phone. As you say, it's becoming the cheapest and in some cases only way to interact with a lot of businesses and services that are necessary simply to operate in society.

Honestly this seems a very "good", manageable business strategy. Cell phone number provides one method of 2FA that is easy (but not necessary secure) to use -- text messages, provides some level of guarantee that the account owner is not a bot, and means that the user is very likely to spend money in phone apps where PayPal is one of the allowed payment methods (e.g. Uber). Companies have little to lose by ignoring users who don't use cell phones.

Eventually we'll reach a point where the police search for you if your phone is off for too long, and ticket you for wasting police time when they find you.

Sounds like an amazing feature already if it was an opt-in service you could turn on and off when you're going to a place where you expect murderers.

There's plenty of places that are dangerous, which police are known not to go into because wearing a police uniform is an invitation for trouble.

You'd also likely be long dead before anybody investigated your disappearance in this hypothetical scenario.

Imagine thinking that dropping expats and international travelers is a good move though.

Do you think that international travelers don't have mobile phones? Really? Same for expats - most immigrants I meet have mobile phones. (I am an immigrant, and meet a fair amount of other immigrants, from various backgrounds, various income levels, and various sorts of jobs). I had to look up to see if the country I'm in even offered residential landline service, honestly.

Not everyone has a smartphone, but that's not what is required. Just a mobile phone that can receive an SMS - and phones have been doing that for 25 years or something.

roaming does not always work, or is expensive. when i travel i get a local number. my previous number doesn't even work here despite having roaming, seemingly due to some incompatibility in the network. if i needed that number to access paypal, i'd be stuck.

Paypal support informed me that I need to use a phone number from the country which I bank in.

There's nothing trustworthy about the people who issued me this current sim card. There's no reason to assume I would want to link it to any account, even if it was allowed. Even if I were inclined to trust this process and if it were possible, I'd have to be using this provider when I am in a 3rd country or in my "home" country.

It is just a nonsensical set of assumptions on PayPal's part.

why imagine? Many banks worldwide currently simply don't allow Americans to open an account with them.

I'm locked out of my paypal account right now because they decided to enable 2fa on an ancient phone number I had in there from years ago out of nowhere.

I don't have access to that number anymore and there's no way to change it.

I have the same issue with my Apple account.

They have my email on file but won't help because the number doesn't match anymore. Just one more reason to not return to the iDevices.

The one I ran into recently was Discord. I use Skype to front all of my SMS. Unfortunately, the SMS-in numbers are not tagged "mobile", so Discord refuses to accept them. Their "solution" is for me to register another account and hope I do not need to provide my phone number... Despite my specifically pointing out that the only reason I need to do this is that Discord allows their servers to require this kind of verification.

Ah well, guess I cannot be a Discord user.

PayPal was the pioneer of e-commerce once upon a time, but now it is better to forget them for good.

For many of us there aren't other viable choices.

Now I’m curious about the possible use case, direct bank transfers or most virtual finance apps charge less than PayPal now, unlike the early 2000s. And if you want privacy instead, PayPal is far worse than crypto

International bank transfer is much slower and (for smaller amount) more expensive than PayPal.

No other PayPal-like finance apps cover as much countries as PayPal.

Cash, coin, and barter all work. Money orders for the few times something isn't available locally.

Don't you guys have phones?

Not everyone does.

For example, I used to live in a part of the UK with no mobile towers, and thus no reception.

So if I really, absolutely had to make a phone call at some point I could then travel to a different town + buy a new sim card / phone number to make the call with.

Meanwhile Vodafone (UK) expires mobile phone numbers after 3 months of inactivity. So, that "new" phone number would tend to be expired when I next needed to use it.

This happened several times. :/

Yeah, you guys all have phone right?

> What kind of person does this?

Possibly Employees pretending to be customers

I was just thinking about that. I like the idea of getting rid of my phone. But looks like you can't do that now.

Getting rid of paypal is not a bad idea anyway; some day they will ‘disappoint’ you too (and steal some money). It’s in their dna. After that you can get rid of your phone. Although all banks in my country need a mobile phone (and some a modern smartphone) too; not sure how that is elsewhere.

It is possible, but it raises the difficulty setting of many otherwise trivial life tasks. I'm in my fifties and have never owned a mobile phone, initially because I don't like phone calls, but more recently out of general cussedness. (I do use an ipad.) The number of services for which a phone number for 2FA or confirmation by SMS is mandatory is definitely on the rise. I guess at some point going phoneless may become the equivalent of trying to live without a bank account. But for now, it remains just barely doable.

They are ubiquitous. Old guy at the cafe counter has one he got for $1. So maybe not the societal problem it might have been decades ago.

I mean, if you need a PayPal account then you must have a dollar.

It would force you into a contract with one or more third parties though, at least a carrier and a handset maker. Maybe Google or Apple as well.

And if you live in a foreign country and bank in another country, what then? Fly back to your "home" country to sign in and stop rebills?

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