Privacy

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Get German VOIP Number to Receive SMS in USA (self.privacy)

submitted 1 year ago by nopersonalspace to c/[email protected]

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My dad does a lot of buying old car parts on German eBay, but there is apparently a new requirement that you need a German phone number (for SMS verification codes, I guess). I was hoping to help him out with this.

I'm based in the US - what is a good way to get ahold of a German phone number for SMS codes? I was thinking maybe Twilio (I'm a software engineer and I've used them before) but it's kind of pricey at $6/month and requires a local address. My dad has a German P.O. box but I'm not sure if that counts. I was going to wire it up to just forward SMS messages to his email.

Is there another way? I know this use case is pretty specific, but I thought if anyone knew about getting VOIP numbers it would be privacy folks!

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Basically all VoIP services do not support SMS as they are based on land-line, not mobile numbers. The people behind the https://www.satellite.me/ app have a long story to tell about how anti-competitive the established mobile carriers are in that regard as they know full well that their numbers and SMS verification codes are about the last moat they have to vendor-lock their users.

So yes, a dedicated SMS service like Twilio is more or less your only option I think.