this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Privacy

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As the tittle sais, i was trying to create an instagram account and it is not possible without a phone number. Same with discord. Obviously i dont want to provide mine. Any working solutions to bypass this? not looking for alternative private service, i already use them.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A second sim is the only options for some. Either ChatGPT or one of those requires a real-world mobile number. Anything on a VoIP is blacklisted. I literally can’t sign up for it or a couple other oddball services (like the Dunkin’ app*) because I refuse to divulge my carrier number to anyone but my family and 2-3 close friends. I have a (former) mobile number and two former landline numbers on VoIP that are my real, active numbers but some services simply refuse to use them.

* I’d use my freebie backup sim for registration, but many use that # as their required+sole 2FA “security“ so signing up with it is useless as I’d have to use that phone every time I interacted. Maybe it’s time to look into eSIMs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

All my main numbers VoIP are Google. I’ve got two others at a large (Canadian, iirc) provider.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Where I'm from you can buy a prepaid SIM card at a gas station which works just fine

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You just need a number that doesn't show up as VoIP, it doesn't actually need to be a SIM card. So if you have a Google fi number, you can use Google messages to access it over the web, even when the phone is off. Because when Carriers look the number up it doesn't come over as VoIP it shows up as an actual mobile number.

You can get numbers from twilio in countries that don't report voip status. That also works.

If you need a number in a country that does report VoIP status, you can use the phone number providers I posted in a different comment in this thread, to get a temporary number that is not VoIP, and receive your SMS verification