I have several accounts in different banks (across two different countries) and never had problems with using SMS as a second factor for internet banking. Definitely not status quo, at least in Europe.
I'm in Europe and my bank (and most other banks in the country) only still allow existing TAN authenticators until they break or run out of battery, but only support 2FA with their app going forward.
Interesting that you mention Europe, because if I remember correctly, at least in Germany, all banks that I'm aware of dropped SMS support when PSD2 was introduced.
1. I don't know any bank that does, but in any case voting with your wallet is always an option.
2., 3., 4. Voting with your wallet once again.
5. That would be illegal in many jurisdictions, some countries even have a centralized systems for doctors to upload documentation (that you access using your ID as an authentication token).
6., 7. Unless the employer provides said smartphone, that would be illegal to require in most countries.
8. Vote with your wallet, also all such airlines can print a boarding pass for free if you do the checkin on the website.
Half of the voting with your wallet are blind to the fact that you can't vote anything else.
My village has one football team, not N. There's one burger place, not two.
For the rest, appealing to legality is pointless, I ain't bringing my family doctor to a tribunal over this, this is real life and me being petty for not wanting to use a phone. Being right years from now is beyond pointless.
epolanski@ is, unfortunately, right. You may try to "walk away" if you are not interested in the end result. If the fact of walking away for you is more important / feels better than actually doing what you came for. (And don't get me started on how girls look at you when you start fishing for petty change in your pockets - that seriously limits your dating pool LOL)
As someone with a long term partner who shares my use of cash, at least for some things, you don’t want to date people who look down on you for your choice of payment. Red flag. Waste of time.
Have some self respect. Don’t date people who aren’t mostly aligned with your values.
I know this was a joke, but if you’re having trouble meeting someone who shares your values, maybe try looking in different places than you would expect (they don’t have to share your interests, that’s less important than you would think as long as you can bend to each other) or reevaluating what you think your “type” is. Many people chase a certain type of person, and only after they end up with someone totally different do they realize that their attraction to that type was some kind of pathology, perhaps replaying trauma from childhood.
I flew with RyanAir several times after they introduced a "mandatory" app boarding pass, never had problems with check-in agents just printing the boarding pass for free (after doing the web check-in). Had to pretend my phone died once, in all other cases they just printed the pass no questions asked.
I recently took the first direct train from Prague to Copenhagen which was expected to take 13 hours from PRG to CPH (normally it should be 11 but there is a construction on the high speed line between Berlin and Hamburg so we had to take a detour through Uelzen).
The train left the Czech Republic with 0 minutes delay. Long story short, we crossed the German-Danish border more than FIVE hours later than the original plan. And it wasn't even in the same physical train, the original one got cancelled from Hamburg because of the huge delay we already had.
As for the reason of the delay, at first it was just German "normal" state of things, we left Bad Schandau (the first German station) on time, got to Dresden with 5 minutes (still "on time" according to DB), then without any visible reason got 20 minutes on approach to Berlin where there were so many people on the platform that it took some other twenty minutes for the passengers to get on and off.
When we arrived to Luneburg, the train stopped and after an hour or so the crew said that there is a problem on the line to Hamburg so we'd have to take another detour (from a detour!) and go through Hannover which added several hours to our delay. On approach to Hamburg we already knew that we'd have to transfer to a Danish train there, which thankfully went pretty fast and we left for Schleswig, where our train stopped again, this time because of a "fire in the vicinity of the tracks". After another two or three hours that it took the firefighters to realize that nothing was actually burning, we finally left Germany and the rest of the trip went just fine and we did not gather any additional delay in Denmark, arriving to Copenhagen in the middle of the night (instead of the original 7:30pm).
TL;DR: Sänk ju for trävelin wiß Deutsche Bahn!
Czech media even wrote[1] about how the train failed to get to its destination.
In my country there are several telco operators that will send you basically an unlimited number of SIM cards for free (as in free beer) that you can use for getting the verification SMS and then immediately throw the SIM away. The only "cost" is that you have to wait a day or two for the SIMs to get to your physical mailbox.
For some reason Prague -> Bratislava trips are only shown with departures at 00:36 even though there are several through cars that leave Prague at 21:58 (and join the rest of the listed NightJet in Breclav), which is much more comfortable for your average traveler. Ceske drahy website has both connections, so maybe you aren't scraping it yet?
In most of the EU, IDs are issued for free to everyone above age 14/15 (and in many countries you can get one even for a newborn for a small fee). Since everyone has this ID, all banks (nearly?, I haven't seen one that doesn't) require ID card and/or a passport to open an account. For medical care you have a separate card with your compulsory medical insurance information that you present to the doctor but in the worst case they can just look up the info using your ID/passport.
Personal anecdata: I get much more spam calls on a number from a country with mandatory ID sim card registration than on a number from a country where anonymous sim cards are allowed. Both numbers are almost 20 years old and I barely use them for anything but calls/sms to friends/relatives and receiving bank 2FA SMSes.
Personal anecdote from my wife yesterday. She doesn’t get many spam calls but has noticed that when a particular friend calls her, she gets a spam call later that day.
I surmised that the friend has some spyware on their phone which is reporting “active” numbers.
For some reason, I'm softlocked from booking tickets from Deutsche Bahn. The website errors out with a cryptic "Your browser's behavior resembles that of a bot." message with no option to try again or pass a captcha or whatever. The website itself described several possible solutions but none helped (I tried using different computers, different internet connections, even a phone connected to internet using a SIM from a different country).
As for now, when I need to travel to Germany, I just book tickets through the national carrier of my home country, which for cross-border tickets often turns out to actually be cheaper than booking through DB. Thankfully I don't live in Germany proper and my need for travel there is not that high (once or twice a year at most) but I wonder what would I do if I had to move to Germany and use trains there more often.
Same problem but with French equivalent SNCF (sncf-connect.com). I just checked and can confirm nothing has changed. You cannot use up-to-date Firefox on Linux to access the main booking site for French rail tickets.
Access is temporarily restricted
We detected unusual activity from your device or network.
Reasons may include:
-Rapid taps or clicks
-JavaScript disabled or not working
-Automated (bot) activity on your network (IP X.X.X.X)
-Use of developer or inspection tools
I just opened the developer tools, then chose 'Separate Window' from the menu. The developer tools are now on my other screen, and then I clicked Reply to your message. The developer tools window that I had open is not relating to this tab, but when I opened Developer Tools for this tab, it remembered that I wanted it in a separate window and did so again. The viewport should not have changed at all..?
reply