Contact number verification trick: Get through sms/call verification on apps/websites without giving away your phone number with this cool app

What's contact number verification?

Nowadays most of the popular websites and apps require our contact numbers when we sign up with them. The main reasons being easier account recovery, security, and for preventing duplicate accounts. To prevent fake numbers, most websites/apps send a "one-time-password"(OTP) to the number via an automated sms/phone call, hence confirming the user has access to that contact number. Also, over the recent years, more and more websites are adopting the otp system for a 2 step login authentication in which the user has to enter an otp sent to his/her phone after logging into his/her account to confirm their identity, which is an excellent security measure.

The Problem

The problem starts when some websites and apps make it compulsory to have a verified contact number in their records, this can be really frustrating for some users.. While registering your phone number with a website(or app) is an excellent security measure, some users may not want to give away their contact numbers to the website either due to privacy issues or lack of trust on the website, or perhaps they have trouble receiving the OTP, there's also the a chance that the person may not be possessing a SIM card for some reason.

The Solution

Luckily there are many apps for android and PC that offer free numbers (usually USA based numbers) that can be used to send and receive free texts to actual phone numbers ( in USA and Canada) and even receive and make calls at low costs. examples of such apps are textnow, textplus, etc(google for more). The one we'll be using today is TextNow which is a free app, all you have to do is register on it using your email, and it will allot you a random USA number, which can be used to text any american or canadian number for free ( and low cost calls to all numbers). So once you have registered with textnow, you can use your number with any website/app you wanna receive otp from you will receive the call on your textnow with the OTP. if you don't own a phone, you can be creative and use bluestacks or some other android emulator on your PC, which would also enable you to use apps like whatsapp on your PC.

So how do we do it?

It goes pretty simple actually, just download TextNow for your phone or PC (same process) from it's official website:

https://www.textnow.com/downloads

After you download and install it, it will ask you for an area code for your new number, just google US area codes and use any of them ( here's a link if you're too lazy to google ). I've noticed that some area codes don't tend to work with apps like whatsapp, 555 or 708 did the trick for me so I suggest you try that first. Then it will assign you a dedicated phone number which you can use to send and receive unlimited texts to any murican/canadian number if you got friends there, or you could use it for the purpose you installed this app and use the number to register in any of the apps or websites that require contact number verification. Now remember otp texts can sometimes get delayed so it's better to receive otp calls whenever you get the chance.

I've used whatsapp in the example below, although it's purely used as an example for testing purposes( I deleted this number's account immediately after registering ) and I do not encourage you to do the same as it may be illegal using these tricks with certain apps and websites, and I'm not responsible for any consequences you suffer from. oh and the interface looks dark because of my  awesome dark theme. So anyways, here's how the rest of it goes:

    

Once we have our new textnow number, we need to enter it on the app we wanna register on and request an OTP via SMS or call. For me, I didn't initially receive the sms and so I tried the "call me" option which was successful and I received an automated call(screenshot below), telling me the OTP. oh and if you fail to answer the call they send you a voice mail which is pretty convenient.

  

After we get the otp, all we gotta do is enter it in the app we wish to register on (whatsapp in this case) and voila, we're done! as you can see in the screenshot, the registration was successful. Some parts can be a bit tricky and/or confusing so just ask if you're stuck anywhere.

Be sure to share your views, ideas and feedback in the comments and feel free to ask any questions whether it is regarding the topic or even if it's totally unrelated. I'll be sure to respond to every query. Also, please do tell me if I made any mistakes or typos so I could fix em.

And that's all for today~