Hacker News Reader

Comment by slashdev | Hacker News Reader

I try to avoid giving my cell number, precisely because it’s not secure, but also because it changes or I travel, and then I’m locked out of my own account.

View on HN

It's not a real vacation if you don't get locked out of at least one bank account or credit card for the crime of accessing your balance from a foreign IP, with no way to recover :)

Works great for my buy-and-hold portfolio.

Same, but it works decidedly less than great for buying train or flight tickets while already abroad and on a travel SIM.

> It's not a real vacation if you don't get locked out of at least one bank account or credit card for the crime of accessing your balance from a foreign IP, with no way to recover :)

Laughs in Bitcoin

Also, Charles Schwab Investment checking account for the uninitiated saves me from this issue; NFC enabled now ensures my card will never get eaten in a random ATM now.

As someone who has been moving countries and subsequently changing phone numbers, every couple of years, SMS 2FA is such a pain.

It's hard to recall all services that have your phone number for migrating them, and even if you do, many won't accept a foreign number.

I've resorted to holding on to my old phone numbers by transferring them to prepaid SIMs.

Be careful with this, if you don’t use the prepaid sim for too long, it’ll get cancelled and you will lose access to all these accounts.

I've lost access to my near-twenty-year-old Google account this way.

I have the username, password and recovery email, but because I can't receive an SMS, I'm dead.

That’s horrific. My wife lost her Instagram account the same way. Really ruined part of our vacation in Paris. Looking back on it though, maybe that was worth it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com