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Comment by madmaniak | Hacker News Reader

I went that path. At first my smartphone stopped working for no reason. I thought it's great moment to downgrade to dumb phone. After about a year I lost my sim card... Then I thought it's great moment to get rid of my phone at all. I needed to detach all services related to my phone - which sometimes is tricky. After all I'm phone-free since 2018. In the meantime I was traveling a lot, working for different companies and I was in touch with friends. I'm known in my circle that I have no phone. At work they don't even ask.

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Wow, no phone since 2018? I'm curious how you're able to live in the modern world. I can immediately understand some of the benefits. I myself use a degoogled Pixel 4a and only have a few basic apps installed. However, going completely without a phone must have some significant drawbacks. Care to elaborate a bit more? Do still have a phone number like VoIP?

I can call to anyone's phone if needed - for example using Skype service - but I have no number to call me. To have a VoIP number - I bought one for 1 month in that period while applying for a job to one huge corporation. HR didn't wanted to pass me further without phone number - but to have a number it was 5 minutes.

Recently I went into the bank to sort out a small issue. They said:

Them: "We'll send a code to your phone."

Me: "Currently roaming isn't working on my phone, so I can't receive SMSs."

They stopped and looked at me, and said:

Them: "Well, we can't proceed."

There are some services that assume you have a phone, and simply will not work without. And some of them are effectively essential.

“Ok, then let’s cancel all my accounts right here and now. Cut me a cashiers cheque for the remaining balance”.

That’ll get them to move.

It won’t because they can’t verify that you are who you say you are in first place, so to them you’re just a scammer trying to socially engineer them. (Or at least that’s how they should be treating you if they were trained correctly.)

They're in a bank. In person. How can an SMS be considered safer than that?

The bank took photocopies of my id when I opened the account. Surely they can match that with the three valid government IDs I carry with me and that should be more trustworthy than a phone which might have been changed in the meanwhile, stolen or imei-spoofed.

Too late to edit above, so adding this here:

D’oh, didn’t realize the anecdote was about an in-person exchange at the bank, I skimmed the context too quickly.

It's 2024. Here in Europe standard customer service would be: sure, need any help packing your bags?

Unless your account has a few million in it

How do you know it doesn’t :)

You mean me - what have I got to do with it?

The clerk would see your balance and probably lots of notices about being a high-net-worth individual etc on their screen

And I don't care about your bank balance :)

My Grandfather did that (he was 80 at the time), he got upset that his bank would not take a cashier's check from another bank, even after calling the other bank to confirm it was valid.

He asked for his 60k worth of deposit in cash, apparently there are laws from the 30s that if you ask for cash they have to give it to you.

The bank ended up calling in police officer, who then confirmed that my grandfather was in the right, and they gave him the 60k. He stuffed it down his pants and drove to the other bank he used, with the police officer kind enough to follow him.

Funny story, but he is definitely on a list of people that that bank will not do business with.

If a bank teller doesn't know that multiple pieces of government-issued identity documentation are a stronger form of authentication than insecure SMS, ask for a manager.

TOTP 2FA is more secure than SMS and it works on an offline iPod Touch. There are also VOIP-based SMS services.

> If a bank teller doesn't know that multiple pieces of government-issued identity documentation are a stronger form of authentication than insecure SMS, ask for a manager.

Do you have hopes that the manager would have a different opinion?

Managers have different authority.

Also, some managers were born before mobile phones were ubiquitous.

All the other comments here make a good point but this is a core problem that I really worry about. Assumption of technology usage. And that eventually you are forced into usage of something you might not want. The amount of businesses and even government divisions that just assume the following.

1) You have a smart phone

2) It is either Apple or Android and nothing else

3) You are happy to use their proprietary app/setup.

I started to become aware of this over a decade back when using Windows Phone. And while I am on an up to date Android phone now, that you are forced to participate.

This is also why Ted Kaczynski was fascinating, An absolute insane lunatic that made some good points about the nature of technology. While his idea about this was a lot more broad, the requirement of phones is just another inch being taken to get to mile took.

"127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man’s freedom of locomotion. "

I really wish that Kaczynski had found better (i.e. not completely insane and immoral) ways to raise awareness of his ideas. He definitely had some insights into the problems technology causes for society, but I feel like his ideas became tainted by the utter madness he pursued for the sake of his ideas.

If he hadn't done what he had done then we almost certainly never would have heard of him and his manifesto.

"The Kaczynski paradox" is a problem for a number (not all) of terrorists or terrorists groups, where fundamentally they have a good point, but also use unacceptable means to bring attention to these points.

Sure, there's truth to that. Doesn't just apply to a terrorism context, either. I forget which essay it was, but Scott Alexander pointed out that while everyone hates PETA, nobody has heard of the animal rights activism orgs which behave responsibly. Still, even if nobody would have heard of Kaczynski or his ideas, it seems to me like that's better than a world in which everyone has heard of his ideas but they aren't allowed to be taken seriously in polite society because of the association with his actions.

Definitely. It applies to multiple levels as well. The massive adoption of banking cards created the expectation that you use one, which then caused cash to not be universally accepted everywhere anymore. Now it's expected that you use an Android or iOS app for said bank. Next up, your banking app expects you to have specific AR smart glasses to use it properly.

It's also an issue with "e-Government" platforms in some European countries. There's this default expectation that you want to use it, which has in some cases made certain tasks more difficult for those whom prefer using regular paper forms. The next layer is those platforms requiring Android/iOS apps, which could very well mean that being able to use healthcare or filing your taxes indirectly requires either a Google or Apple account, and agreeing to their agreements.

Indeed. I had disputes with my bank on that and even digitization ministry of my country. Both are breaking the law on this field but I can't do anything about it. To proceed in such cases I use number of trusted person.

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