Bitcoin Forum

My accounts at the exchanges all need my phone for SMS verification to log in. So what if the phone was lost? Would I be locked out?

The phone that I use is a pre-paid one and I fill minutes with pre-paid cards. I have used the phone number for years but it is not on any special account.

What do you think? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???

If you can prove its you that's been paying for. It then you can order the pac from the company that hosts the phone (potentially). If you have kyc on your accounts they might just want you to unlock them. Or they ought pick up an address you've sent money to the exchange with or withdrawn to in the past to let you get your money back.

You have to make sure these are possible though before you think it's safe/alright to lose your phone.

I have accounts in various exchanges and not a single one requires this. SMS is a poor man's 2fa, but it can be easily intercepted, so its nearly pointless to use it in my opinion. If you disable the sms verification, you don't have to worry about losing your phone line. I think the couple of exchanges that demand 2fa can fallback to sms, but instead you could use 2fa in a pc. I think Authy (https://authy.com/) runs in a chromium browser iirc, and it backups too (unlike google's) so you can easily move from phone to phone (or tablet/PCs).

Artemis3 is right. SMS is a very poor method of 2FA, as there have been many cases of attackers fairly easily hijacking phone numbers and intercepting your messages. It would be much better to swap to something like Authy or Google which provide printable back up codes and recovery methods should your phone be lost or stolen.

The recovery codes that should be used with a 2FA application like Authy or Google don't really need to be printed, either- there's always the possibility that a printer connected to the internet has been compromised as well. I personally write down my 2FA recovery codes and keep them in a dark and dry place that I can somewhat easily access in case I lose a device. I haven't yet needed to use any of the codes, but always be ready for the worst.

Just remember to do another hand written copy and store it in a physically apart and secure place. You know, in case of disaster (same thing with the seed words/privkeys etc).

you could get your simcard from the company which you took by raising a complaint

I remember my friend did this when his phone was stolen and he has saved important contacts from that number. You can address this to the network provider.

It's not a crypto related reason why he has brought it up to his network provider but it helped him took back that number by proving some relative info's regarding that number.

There are some authenticator which you can recover if you lost your phone. I am using one namely andOTP. It requires an account.

Best way to get the funds back would be getting the SIM card with the same phone number. You should urgently contact the service provider of your SIM and let them know that your mobile is lost. They could just disable your previous SIM and if you have the KYC verified there you can get a new SIM with the same number and you could recover all the funds in safe and easy way.

Also you should report to the nearest police station as anyone could easily read your OTPs without even opening the phone lock as the SMS notification just appears on the lock screen.

Currently use Authy or Google Authenticator to verify more, I think it is more secure.

I regretted not using Authy. GA doesn't feature any backup so if have a long list of sites, it's pretty inconvenient to start over.

I think you can contact support to that exchange. You can contact by sending email and create support ticket in their website

You can simply disable your 2FA and just re-enable it and copy the provided backup code, for potential instances where you lose access to your phone. Simply write the backup code down, put it in a safe, then you're pretty much good.

Authy is definitely convenient, but I think it has more points of failure than just using Google's authenticator. So Google Authenticator is still the option for me.

Network operators, at least here in my country, accepts Prepaid Cards for reference.

You can used that as requirements instead of the old module when changing to a new module with the same number.

On the other hand, there are crypto exchanges who allows changing numbers. Just seek their support for details.

Anyways, since we are on "what if" just try to keep taking care of your belongings to avoid further problems in the future.

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+1

As discussed above, SMS verification is a poor way to secure accounts.

For your case when you lost your phone, you should do following steps to try recovering your account:
- Creating support ticket to exchange's support team / help desk (of course).
- A spreadsheet of your transactional history (it might help sometimes).
- A information on the final balance of your account (of course, you can not remember exact balance, but you should give as nearly exact balance as possible).
Next, waiting for response from exchange's support staffs/ team; and let's see your luckiness.

If you can get your account back, you should use 2FA for both your exchange account and your email for higher security level.

Good luck,

What email client do you recommend for connecting to the exchange accounts?
 
I am thinking of using the Google Authentication but I am also thinking that Google is not that safe?

Google? Yahoo? Hotmail?  Or something else?

Google authenticator is safe and secured as far as I know, only ensure you save the unique code generated when enabling 2FA, without it, your account would be inaccessible to you should you lose your device.
Authy is a preferable option which safes your information to the cloud and can be retrieved should you lose your device.

I think the best move is to contact the Support Team and explain the situation with them. If there is any way around it, i'm sure they will suggest the best options for you to take. e.g they could just ask for proof of deposit transaction details i.e how much the last transaction was, and the time of the transaction etc. Give it a try. You never know.

What exchanges you're using? Because majority of exchanges have Google 2FA, not SMS verification. So, my advice - always use Google 2FA if it's possible bacause it's safer and more reliable method than SMS verification. One very important thing - don't forget to save your Google 2FA backup code.
And if worst case scenario that you mentioned in OP will happen, it doesn't means that you lost money that you had on exchange. Then you will have to contact support of exchange and prove that you're original owner of account. They can ask you to upload your personal documents - ID card or passport, you may also be asked to make selfie with your documents and etc

When using google 2fa make sure you also handwritten the code, if you use authy you can use it on multi device without losing the security codes that you added. About the sms verification, better to disable it so you can still access your  account even if you lost your  phone and if there's a 2fa then start enabling 2fa by using authy or google 2fa.

You can start now by making use of email verification rather than SMS phone verification.
But some SIM card provides you with the option of welcome back that is getting a new SIM but still maintain the number of your lost sim