What are peoples' experiences like with short number verifications?

General
1

With my TextNow and Talkatone VoIP numbers I’m able to get verification codes from places like Social Security and banks. Should I expect it to work the same way with VoIP.ms using Groundwire?

Thanks.

1 Like
2

I see I received some short number messages from USPS 28777 in my ported in Skype number, so I guess it must work.

3

Many such services will refuse to work with my phone number, or will not work at all. In some rare cases, it does work. So when I can, I use my phone number, when it does not, I have no choice but to use my mobile phone number.

I do not know what the issue is, but I suspect that somehow they know that this is a voip service or a non-mobile phone number, and refuse to use such numbers. But when the number is accepted but does not work, I do not know. It might be an issue with voip.ms, but they themselves say there are no guarantees with such short codes.

Kind regards!

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4

I’m even seeing issues in sending SMS messages between VoIP numbers. Like Talkatone to TextNow sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. When it isn’t working, it does work if I send to someone’s actual mobile number.

I need to do more testing of sending/receiving SMS between VoIP.ms and other VoIP apps vs real mobile numbers to see if it’s any better.

5

ahoy @douglerner,

i have been with VoIP.ms for around ~6 months and in summary thus far i can say that their SMS short code support seems to be less reliable than the other VoIP service that i have used CallCentric.

as @aleclerc describes there are ways for platforms to know if your number is VoIP or mobile or landline, and those platforms which do not allow VoIP numbers (e.g. Venmo, PayPal) will not accept neither VoIP.ms nor CallCentric numbers for mobile verification as expected. however i have found platforms that will accept a VoIP number for mobile verification codes but only my CallCentric number works: the VoIP.ms number never actually receives the messages.

i like VoIP.ms, their service, and their features especially the ability to use email for both sending and receiving SMS messages. but it seems that their SMS support, especially with short codes, needs to improve compared to CallCentric, which hopefully it will. of course it could be some technical issue with how the SMS and MMS messages function that keeps things from working .. but that is way above my pay grade :wink:

good luck and please let us know if you have any success with getting your VoIP.ms number working for mobile verification codes.

peace, w

PS: if you are interested in CallCentric my affiliate code (“Agent ID”) is 97482 if you sign up .. i think that i get a small commission but cannot say for sure. regardless their service has been very reliable for years, though they have fewer features IMHO and seem less active in adding newer ones.

1 Like
6

Hello @waynedpj,

Thank you for bringing all this additional information. This is helpful even for me as I am a customer of voip.ms for years and have no experience with other providers.

I also hope that one day voip.ms will improve its SMS service. What works does work, but this is not the best experience. I rarely suggest that people send me SMS, unless we tried first to be sure it does work.

Kind regards,
Alexandre

7

I do seem to be getting some short number verifications to my ported in old Skype number, like USPS 28777. I haven’t tried with social security or a bank yet.

Basically my impression about SMS with VoIP.ms and Groundwire so far is:

  • It works, but it works better when doing it with a cellular number than testing to another VoIP, because sometimes it doesn’t go through if both sides are VoIP.
  • The short numbers do work, but I haven’t doesn’t a lot of testing with it.

doug

8

I am also facing the same issue

9

My short number verifications almost always work with voip.ms, everyone except 1 company. Plus, I can get them sent to me in an email, which is so convenient. There is only 1 company that will not send SMS to the number, and I probably get short texts from about 20 companies.

The difference may be that I am using numbers that I imported into voip.ms so some companies may view them as more normal numbers, despite voip.ms handling things.

If this is important to you, you can always get a cell number, use it as a cell regularly, and then import it later after using it a while into voip.ms.

I think a lot of whether a number works or not for this is whether it is listed in some list of “voip” numbers or not. There are different ways companies try to determine whether a number is real or VOIP and part of it is how the number is used.

I’ve done this with other companies and find voip.ms most convenient because I can get it via email.

10

There are two separate issues:

  1. To what extent VoIP.ms supports receiving SMS messages from short codes

  2. Whether banks and other companies sending verification codes via SMS will accept VoIP.ms numbers.

My comments:

  1. Although VoIP.ms says they do not guarantee that they can process SMS messages coming from short codes, it appears to me that they are able to process all the ones I have received. I recently switched all but one of my VoIP numbers from Telnyx to VoIP.ms, and there is no company whose codes I was able to receive on Telnyx but whose codes did not reach me with VoIP.ms. I am receiving SMS messages via email, and occasionally I have checked them on Linphone.

  2. My VoIP numbers (both Telnyx and VoIP.ms) are listed in number verification services as “fixed” (land) lines. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to which companies refuse to send verification codes to my VoIP numbers. With one bank, they will send the code for my business account, but not for my personal account!

Since OP mentioned needing to receive codes from Social Security (which uses login.gov), if they will not send codes to a VoIP number (I don’t know if they do or not) and you don’t want to use an actual mobile number to receive codes, you can use an authenticator like Ente Authenticator (free and open-source) (https://ente.io/auth/). One thing I like about it is that you can access the same account from more than one device, and it supports many platforms. For example, if you have it on your phone and your computer, and your phone is stolen, you can still access accounts using it on your computer.