Cell phone now needed for Social Security AND Bank login

[OnMyWay]

1 hour ago, Queenie O. said:

Can anyone offer any tips about google voice and how it works? It seems to work for you guys. Just a matter of time before all of us with online banking will encounter what Dave did I'm sure. Can you use google voice just for texting?

How does one acquire a US google voice number from an international base like the Philippines? Hope this isn't off thread again, or too technical to answer here, but google voice seems to be the offered option that works as of now.

1.  You need a U.S. phone number to get it set up.  My sister let me use hers and we did the setup together while chatting online.

2. You can choose what area code is used.  I chose South Florida as I own a house there.

3. After you are activated, you can change the setup so the phone number you used for setup (in my case, my sister's) will never receive anything.  Change the settings to forward to your e-mail.  All voicemails and texts will be forwarded to your mail.  (I can't remember if it will work with all e-mail or only google mail.  I already had a google mail account).

4.  Google voice will translate voicemails you get to text before it e-mails them to you.  Texts are text already!  :-)

5.  You can have a custom voicemail greeting but it has to be setup from the phone you used for setup.

6.  You can send texts to U.S. phones.  When you are doing that, it seems just like chat.

7.  There are other things I have not used, such as having everything forwarded to another phone.  I think you can make calls too, but I have not tried.  I used Skype and FB for calling and video calls.

Hope this helps!

[Queenie O.]

2 hours ago, OnMyWay said:

Hope this helps!

Thanks OnMyWay,

I already have a gmail account too, so I'll try to figure this out using your info and a US phone number.

Queenie

[mogo51]

I had a similar problem recently when using Credit Card to buy airline tickets.  They blocked my card, contacted the bank online, they contacted me by phone and sorted it all - a good bank, not one of the big 4s in Australia - I sacked all them in years gone by.

[Gentleman.Jack.Darby]

On 7/29/2016 at 3:03 AM, Dave Hounddriver said:

NOTE TO READERS:  This topic starts as only about Canadian banks but deals with the same problems at US Social Security at about post 6 and beyond. Read On!

My money is deposited in a Canadian bank (very difficult to avoid this in my situation) and I go online to pay bills and transfer money.

Going to their site today, I was just informed that they will soon enforce a new security measure.  When I do an online transaction that they deem 'unusual' then they will send a codenumber to a Canadian based cell phone number via SMS or they will send a automated voice numeric code to a Canadian landline.  I must enter that code number to continue.

I am sure their idea of 'unusual' means things like large transactions to overseas accounts or signing on from a Philippine ISP.  So I shall need a way to get the code number.  What a pain.  I can change bank accounts in Canada but what if the other banks institute the same security measures.  Hmmmm.  Anyone else with this problem.  How would you deal with it.

I suppose I can use the method of writing cheques and waiting a month for them to clear but then I am subject to the exchange rate in use at my Philippine bank which is always heavily i their favor.  I can't use my Canadian ATM card anymore as they cancelled that on me without explanation.

Life used to be so simple.

I have been wrestling with the issue of bank confirmation SMS for a couple of years now in anticipation of a permanent retirement move outside the U.S. to, most likely, the PI, Thailand, or Malaysia. Still have 6 months to go until I can claim my pension, which is the cornerstone upon which all else is built...

I am an American, currently living in U.S., so my information is from that perspective.

I've had a Google Voice account for a couple of years and it's great for everything **EXCEPT** for bank confirmation SMS. After much research, testing, and frustrating discussion with bank so-called "customer support representatives" who didn't even understand the question, let alone how to solve it, it's my opinion that the reason that bank SMS won't work is because the banks, and any other entity that wishes to do so, can "tell" that a GV number isn't a "real" cell number because it isn't registered to (provided by) , in my case, a U.S. cell carrier. The end result is that either the bank's system doesn't send the SMS or the SMS gets lost "in transit".

So my next thought was to get a "foreign" (non - U.S.) cell number. However, when researching sending SMS from one country to another, I found that due to variances and technical details among different countries' cell systems, sending SMS from one country to another isn't reliable and certainly NOT something that I want to rely upon for getting access to my bank account or U.S. Social Security.

So, from my research and testing so far, I've come up with three options:

1. Use a friend or family members (located in one's home country) cell number to receive the confirmation SMS and then forward it, via e-mail or, for example, TextPlus, LINE, or GV, to you. Apps like TextPlus, LINE, WeChat, etc. are designed from the ground-up to work worldwide and, because the traffic is routed through centralized server(s), is very reliable. And security really isn't an issue with the confirmation SMS because the SMS is only one part of "two-factor" authentication, ie; it's worthless without one's used ID and password.

2. The second option is to get a bank account that gives one a "token" or that uses a cell phone app, such as Google Authenticator or Symantec VIP Access to generate a confirmation code. Bank of America has a credit card-sized card, called SafePass, that will generate the code; Fidelity uses Symantec VIP to generate the code for access to their brokerage and Cash Management Accounts. I have accounts with both BofA and Fidelity and those solutions work fine. Another option, which I expect is available in Canada, would be an account with HSBC because they offer a token - the downside is that HSBC has relatively high minimum balance requirements to escape (relatively high) monthly fees.

3. The third option is to get an inexpensive **UNLOCKED** **GSM** smartphone (usable on AT&T or T-Mobile, in the U.S.), WITH WI-FI capability and get JUST a voice plan and text - NO DATA. Ask a reliable friend or family member to allow your phone to be plugged into an AC outlet and connect to their wi-fi. Then install an app called PushBullet on the phone. The PushBullet app will "push" all incoming texts to their server and you can "see" the texts in real-time from your laptop browser when logged into the PushBullet website. One could also use AirDroid to accomplish the same thing, but I've found PushBullet to be less "finicky" and more reliable than AirDroid for this purpose. The reason that an unlocked GSM phone is preferable for this purpose is because unlocked GSM phones are very inexpensive and if one's home country-based phone fails, the trusted friend need only swap the SIM card to a new phone, turn it on, connect to wi-fi and one is back in business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gentleman.Jack.Darby]

On 7/29/2016 at 3:03 AM, Dave Hounddriver said:

NOTE TO READERS:  This topic starts as only about Canadian banks but deals with the same problems at US Social Security at about post 6 and beyond. Read On!

My money is deposited in a Canadian bank (very difficult to avoid this in my situation) and I go online to pay bills and transfer money.

Going to their site today, I was just informed that they will soon enforce a new security measure.  When I do an online transaction that they deem 'unusual' then they will send a codenumber to a Canadian based cell phone number via SMS or they will send a automated voice numeric code to a Canadian landline.  I must enter that code number to continue.

I am sure their idea of 'unusual' means things like large transactions to overseas accounts or signing on from a Philippine ISP.  So I shall need a way to get the code number.  What a pain.  I can change bank accounts in Canada but what if the other banks institute the same security measures.  Hmmmm.  Anyone else with this problem.  How would you deal with it.

I suppose I can use the method of writing cheques and waiting a month for them to clear but then I am subject to the exchange rate in use at my Philippine bank which is always heavily i their favor.  I can't use my Canadian ATM card anymore as they cancelled that on me without explanation.

Life used to be so simple.

Well, it's very easy to get around a website "seeing" that one is logging in from a non-U.S. or non-Canadian ISP - Just use a VPN and, for example, choose a Canadian server.

One thing to keep in mind is, that if one is going to use a VPN, use a "serious" one. By that I mean a VPN that one pays for, has been around for a while and is, ideally, located in a country that has some respect for privacy. I would recommend avoiding the free VPN's that one can find on the internet for a variety of reasons, the major ones being that one doesn't know how reliable they are or what, exactly, they do with one's traffic. A serious VPN really doesn't cost much - mine is a major one and it's USD 45 per year or about USD 3.75 per month.

As well, a serious VPN will not only give one an IP address in a desired country, but they will also ensure that one's connection uses DNS servers in that country or, at a minimum, use Google's public DNS. Nothing worse than having a website "see" one using, for example, a Canadian IP address while at the same time "seeing" one's connection using, for example, DNS server addresses belonging to a Philippines ISP.

 

 

 

 

[Gentleman.Jack.Darby]

On 7/31/2016 at 9:19 PM, OnMyWay said:

1.  You need a U.S. phone number to get it set up.  My sister let me use hers and we did the setup together while chatting online.

2. You can choose what area code is used.  I chose South Florida as I own a house there.

3. After you are activated, you can change the setup so the phone number you used for setup (in my case, my sister's) will never receive anything.  Change the settings to forward to your e-mail.  All voicemails and texts will be forwarded to your mail.  (I can't remember if it will work with all e-mail or only google mail.  I already had a google mail account).

4.  Google voice will translate voicemails you get to text before it e-mails them to you.  Texts are text already!  :-)

5.  You can have a custom voicemail greeting but it has to be setup from the phone you used for setup.

6.  You can send texts to U.S. phones.  When you are doing that, it seems just like chat.

7.  There are other things I have not used, such as having everything forwarded to another phone.  I think you can make calls too, but I have not tried.  I used Skype and FB for calling and video calls.

Hope this helps!

I've used GV for several years now and I can provide a little more info:

If one wants, GV can provide a free local number in the area of one's choosing. This is the number that one gives out to friends and family and the simple way to think of that number is as a number tied to a person instead of to a piece of hardware that one owns, such as a cell phone. AFAIK, that number will never expire.

Once one has a GV number, one then ties one's physical devices to that number. For example, I have my home landline, my office landline, and one of my cell numbers tied to my GV number. One can decide how each of one's contacts are treated when they call one's GV number - for example, when close friends and family call me, it rings my home landline, office landline only during working hours, and my cell number all at the same time, so I rarely miss those calls. When other friends call, GV rings only my home landline or if a co-worker calls, GV rings my office landline during working hours; otherwise, they go to voice mail.

GV is also smart enough to know to send a SMS or MMS message only to a cell number - it won't send those to a landline.

GV and GMail are two different pieces of the Google ecosystem that work together - for example when one receives a SMS at the GV number, it goes to the messaging app on one's cell phone, the GV app on the cell phone, and into one's GMail account.

As well, one one gets a VM message, GV tries to transcribe it and sends it to one's GMail account.

Making calls from GV is great as well - when one has the GV app on one's cell phone, one can configure the GV app to ask how to make the call each time, ie; one uses the dialer to enter the number one is calling and then the GV app asks if the call should be placed using GV or the cell phone. By doing it that way, one need only give out the GV number, which is helpful when one changes cell numbers - no notifying 5,000 people that one has changed cell numbers, or home landline numbers, or office numbers, etc.

Making calls from the GV desktop is great as well - when I'm at my desk in the office or at home, I bring up GV in a browser window, enter the number I want to call, and then GV asks which phone I want to use. At home, I choose "home phone" and GV then rings my home phone. I pick up the phone and then GV places the call.

Of course, one can also make GV calls from a desktop or laptop using a headset with microphone as long as one is connected to the internet.

GV is also smart enough to make international calls using GV (assuming one has GV credits) instead of one's cellular account. Saves lots of money.

And GV has some nice options for dealing with people that have one's GV number but that one longer wants to talk to - Send them directly to voice mail or, for the really bad ones, give them a message that says "this number has been disconnected."

Google's rates for calling outside the the U.S. are remarkably inexpensive, except for maybe Vanuatu, which I think is like $1.50 per minute. Rates for the Philippines are USD 0.11 per minute for landlines and USD 0.15 for cellular.

Other than making international calls, everything else is free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gentleman.Jack.Darby]

On 7/29/2016 at 11:36 PM, Mr. Bobo said:

I just received an email today from the Social Security Administration today outlining their new security procedures to log on to the SS website that go into effect Monday. Instead of copying and pasting the content of the email I found a link with the content here:

http://jackpineradicals.com/boards/topic/cell-phone-now-needed-for-social-security-login/

I assume that the "text-enabled cell phone" they are referring to cannot be a Philippines cell phone. Anyone have a workaround? I have seen alot of talk about MagicJack on the forum but it doesn't look like it can emulate a "text-enabled cell phone". Am I wrong? Does any one have any solutions?

 

I just tried to log in to the SS site, which has my Google Voice number and I **DID NOT** receive the verification SMS so, unless the site is bogged down and behind in sending the SMS, it appears that GV won't work.

I would also doubt that MagicJack will work because it's Voice Over IP (VoIP) as opposed to a "real" cell number, ie; a cell number from a U.S. cellular provider.

 

 

[Gentleman.Jack.Darby]

On 7/29/2016 at 11:36 PM, Mr. Bobo said:

I just received an email today from the Social Security Administration today outlining their new security procedures to log on to the SS website that go into effect Monday. Instead of copying and pasting the content of the email I found a link with the content here:

http://jackpineradicals.com/boards/topic/cell-phone-now-needed-for-social-security-login/

I assume that the "text-enabled cell phone" they are referring to cannot be a Philippines cell phone. Anyone have a workaround? I have seen alot of talk about MagicJack on the forum but it doesn't look like it can emulate a "text-enabled cell phone". Am I wrong? Does any one have any solutions?

 

Damn government making me look bad!

I just posted that the SS confirmation SMS **WOULD NOT** work with Google Voice, so I went back to the SS site to request the letter to enter a new cell number.

Just for sh*ts and grins, I asked it to send a new SMS confirmation and as soon as I hit [SEND], the code showed up on my phone through GV and in my GMail box.

It appears that my first try just failed which, I guess, is to be expected considering this procedure is new and I'd expect the SS infrastructure is under strain from people like me, just testing.

Anyway, it appears that the SS confirmation SMS **WILL WORK** with GV.

I'd expect it will also work with other Voice over IP (VOIP) services such as MagicJack, TextPlus, LINE, etc. - anything that gives one a "telephone" number, even if it's "virtual" or VoIP.

SKype numbers **CANNOT** receive SMS of any kind.

 

 

 

 

[AlwaysRt]

13 hours ago, Gentleman.Jack.Darby said:

I've had a Google Voice account for a couple of years and it's great for everything **EXCEPT** for bank confirmation SMS. After much research, testing, and frustrating discussion with bank so-called "customer support representatives" who didn't even understand the question, let alone how to solve it, it's my opinion that the reason that bank SMS won't work is because the banks, and any other entity that wishes to do so, can "tell" that a GV number isn't a "real" cell number because it isn't registered to (provided by) , in my case, a U.S. cell carrier. The end result is that either the bank's system doesn't send the SMS or the SMS gets lost "in transit".

It sounds to me like one of your Google Voice option settings are incorrect or conflicting somehow as I would think it would work better for you in the States than me in the Philippines. I signed into the my SS site yesterday, it said 'hey we need your phone number now', I entered my Google number and instantly received my verification text via gmail. Same last week with my BoA account. I already had my GV number listed but retyped it, hit update and receive a verification text via gmail in about 30 seconds. It works for me so it should work for you is why I suggest looking over your GV settings.

Edited August 4, 2016 by AlwaysRt

[Dave Hounddriver]

1 minute ago, AlwaysRt said:

It works for me so it should work for you

Isn't that what he said, in capital letters with asterisks?  Or am I missing something?