Comment by cookiengineer
3 years ago
Don't forget 2FA from shitty European companies! And pizza delivery notifications!
Jokes aside, I see SMS as a useless protocol; because it cannot be used for identification, and neither can anything be encrypted nor verified without another communication channel.
It's also not in the power of the end user to decide whether or not their number gets reassigned, blocked, or does work at all. Most US people seem to think that it's normal to have "one" number for years on end. For the rest of the world, it's not true.
For example: If I don't use my SIM card to make phone calls (which get billed) for 6 months, it's gone and reallocated to a different person.
> Most US people seem to think that it's normal to have "one" number for years on end. For the rest of the world, it's not true.
Uh, I’m from Germany and had the same mobile number for over 20 years.
Up to relatively recently (a few years ago) it was not possible to transfer numbers from one provider to another.
Even two years ago, I had to actually change a phone number because I couldn't transfer my number from one provider to their own reseller. O2 Scheißladen.
> Up to relatively recently (a few years ago) it was not possible to transfer numbers from one provider to another.
Huh, I guess I got lucky staying with Viag Interkom and then O2 (which was an automatic switch when O2 bought them) for so long, I only really switched providers in 2020 which was long after the EU regulation was in effect.
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I'm not sure what you mean about a reassigned number? Do you mean that people risk getting a new number, whether they want it or not? Because that shouldn't be an issue - I believe all of Europe (at least EU) demands that the customer can transfer their number to a new provider or whatever, whenever they want. So maybe you mean something else?
> Do you mean that people risk getting a new number, whether they want it or not?
It's a ̶̶u̶s̶e̶ pay it or lose it thing. AFAIK, typically applies to prepaid/pay-as-you-go SIMs, not on contracts.
For my case, it is that I have to make a 12EUR top-up every 3 months. The top-up credit will expire if I don't make another top-up on time. After a few months on zero credit, you get you incoming calls blocked. And after a couple more months, your SIM is de-registered.
Transferring your number is always possible, yes. As long as you're still the registered owner of the SIM number.
Ah. That sounds like a strange prepaid SIM. I haven't seen any of those. Assuming that's the same as a prepaid plan. For the latter ones you can go years without topping up, in my experience, but they suffer from the same as any other SIM - if you don't use the phone even once in a year (or sometimes less), then it expires and you can't use the number. I saw someone complain about that because the guy had this "emergency phone" in the glove department of his car, which he never used, until an accident - and then he couldn't call (if it had been serious he could always call 112, I'm not sure he was aware of that). Come to think of it, this happened to a number I and my wife kept on a "loaner" phone we gave to foreign visitors, during the Covid period (no visitors..)