Skip forever, Yahoo, I'm not giving you my fucking phone number!

[curlcoat]

@ZipperJJ

Regardless of your relationship with PayPal, they are still the payment processor for the SDMB. They require a phone number like any other payment processor.

PayPal doesn’t have my phone number, but then my account is very old.

[arseNal]

@BigT

That may make sense in theory, but not in practice. First off, it assumes that I save the password to my security email account in the clear somewhere on my computer. And that they have gotten through any security I have set up on said computer.

How so? Remember emails can be intercepted – an MTA along the way can be hacked, maybe a rogue ISP employee. That’s very unlikely you say? Well then I’m sure you’ll be comfortable sending an email from your yahoo account to your gmail account containing all your usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers just to test this comfort level. After all they’re both webmail with https right?

Besides, we were (at least I was) talking about a situation where the user may have already been compromised. After all, that’s a very likely time when they’d be trying to change his password. So, the user’s computer/network may be already under control by an attacker, this is the worst time for the user to give him a way to now take over an email account.

Finally, it’s not useful just for password recovery. It could be a simple alert to tell you that your account security settings have changed. You don’t see the value in receiving that as a text message instead of an email to some alternate address?

Second, and more importantly, I’m going to be logged in to my main email address on my phone. It’s kinda a necessity with the way smartphones work these days. And between my laptop and my phone, which am I most likely to lose?

It’s true that with emails and text messaging taking place on the same device, the definition of “out-of-band” becomes a little hazy, and the security industry will have to solve for it. But most users still do most of their internet activity from a PC. There are still a gazillion outlook users out there. Besides, a text message can still be out of band in some situations – in the aforementioned rogue MTA/ISP, for example.

Not that they could tell that there was any fraudulent activity if I get compromised on my own equipment. The way such activity is detected is that it comes from an unusual location.

We’re not only talking about situations where your email provider has proactively detected intrusion. The user can be changing his password for whatever reason.

[ZipperJJ]

@curlcoat

PayPal doesn’t have my phone number, but then my account is very old.

Procrustus doesn’t have a PayPal account, which is probably why they need his phone number to process his credit card payment, being that they are the SDMB payment processor. Just like when you go to any other site and buy something and they ask for your billing phone number.

[Anaamika]

Putting a fake phone number in won’t actually do jackshit. BECAUSE then gmail/yahoo will stop you every 3-4 weeks to verify your number. Jackasses. I have my cell number in there, just in case I need to recover - Gmail has everything in it - and they still check with me periodically.

[curlcoat]

@ZipperJJ

Procrustus doesn’t have a PayPal account, which is probably why they need his phone number to process his credit card payment, being that they are the SDMB payment processor. Just like when you go to any other site and buy something and they ask for your billing phone number.

Oooohhhhh. I guess I’ve never made a PayPal payment without going thru my account.

[BlankSlate]

AdBlock is the problem. Yahoo is trying shed accounts that use ad blockers. What is the point of providing services to someone who won’t accept advertising? So they’ve implemented an array of annoyances for "customers’ who block, including endless plays for a cell number and service outages.

[steatopygia]

Reported to Nigeria

[markdp]

There must be at least one country in the world that has banned asking for phone numbers while putting in a password.
Does anyone know? Maybe I could get on to yahoo or other problem sites using the tor browser (changes the country you appear to be in.)
Most of these big companies obey laws even if they don’t agree with them.

[Broomstick]

@sweat209

To set up new yahoo account now you must enter phone number and the same with youtube.Part of this is to stop spam.

They will send you activation code to your phone so putting in a fake phone number will not work.

Which pretty much sucks if you don’t have a smart phone. Guess they don’t want my business. They can’t text my phone because my phone doesn’t do texting.

[muldoonthief]

@Broomstick

Which pretty much sucks if you don’t have a smart phone. Guess they don’t want my business. They can’t text my phone because my phone doesn’t do texting.

You don’t need a smartphone for texting. SMS predates the proliferation of smartphones by over 2 decades. I’m actually somewhat amazed you can still buy a phone at all that doesn’t do texting.

[Broomstick]

My phone is a really old phone and doesn’t do texting. I take pretty good care of my stuff so it seldom breaks, and given my budget, upgrading a phone isn’t on the table unless it breaks.

[Debillw3]

@Broomstick

Which pretty much sucks if you don’t have a smart phone. Guess they don’t want my business. They can’t text my phone because my phone doesn’t do texting.

As is said above, they generally offer you a choice between SMS or an automated phone call.

But, at the end of the day, they probably don’t care if they have your business or anyone else’s in your position. As cell towers are upgraded, phones old enough to not have texting lose reception capabilities.

Heck, this was even discussed earlier this year over in GQ.

I’m actually surprised such phones still get reception as it is, as even the phones being discussed in the above thread are texting capable.

Anyway, with regard to Google & Yahoo! services, the percentage of the population still using those phones is, in terms of the number of customers they service, so low as to be insignificant. It’s not a number they’re going to lose sleep over, and is likely too low to even enter their minds.

They aren’t saying “we don’t want their business”, but they darn right don’t care if they have it or not.