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Unable to receive one-time passwords from Twitter and Instagram after porting number [SOLVED]

ruk
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

Last week I ported my mobile number from Eastlink to Public Mobile. Everything went well, and I was immediately able to send and receive both calls and SMS.

 

One problem I encountered, however, was that one-time passwords sent by SMS from shortcodes from sites like Instagram and Twitter were not reaching me; I never had problems with these when I was with Eastlink.

 

I raised this issue in a private message to @CS_Agent and they tenaciously pursued the issue over the past week, eventually determining that the upstream SMS service provider that Twitter and Instagram use was continuing to route these messages to Eastlink, my old provider.

 

The upstream provider was able to update this, and I'm now receiving these messages without issue.

 

Posting this here in case others experience the same thing when porting a number to Public Mobile from elsewhere.

 

Also posting here to tip my hat to @CS_Agent for providing excellent support.

11 REPLIES 11

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@GinYVR wrote:

 

For an 2FA authenticator option that doesn't involve cellphone #s AND have a backup option, I recommend the Microsoft Authenticator. The iOS verion stores the backup on your iCloud to keep things seperate. It does do propreitory things like generates 8 digit 2FA vs 6 for Microsoft and AD accounts, however for industry standard 2FA it is solid.


@GinYVR I should add: I use Microsoft Authenticator for my Office 365 (work) account and my personal outlook.com account, since you can authenticate by clicking Allow in the push notification and not even having to deal with a code at all.  Very handy indeed.  For everything else that isn't limited to SMS 2FA, I use Authy.

 

 


@hwsamuel wrote:

Good news is that it's back to normal on Facebook and a bunch of other apps, except for PayPal


@hwsamuel good news indeed!  Thanks for the update.


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hwsamuel
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

Good news is that it's back to normal on Facebook and a bunch of other apps, except for PayPal

To add to what @srlawren If you are using Authy with the backup option MAKE SURE YOU TURN OFF the Add New Devices option OFF under Devices section after you have setup all your devices, since Authy needs a cellphone number to authenticate there is still a potential weakness.

 

For an 2FA authenticator option that doesn't involve cellphone #s AND have a backup option, I recommend the Microsoft Authenticator. The iOS verion stores the backup on your iCloud to keep things seperate. It does do propreitory things like generates 8 digit 2FA vs 6 for Microsoft and AD accounts, however for industry standard 2FA it is solid.

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

The good news is that both Facebook and Twitter allow 2FA/MFA via apps now instead of text messages.  Do yourself a favour and switch to using Authy for both.  


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ruk
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

My impression from my own similar experiences, related above, are that somehow, in the thicket of complexity that is the SMS system and mobile operators, something gets cached somewhere -- either at the application level, or somewhere inbetween.

 

I had to raise this with Public Mobile to get the "cache cleared," but it may have repaired on its own had I been more patient.

hwsamuel
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

I'm having this issue with Facebook and also other apps, and it's been more than a couple of days since I moved from Chatr to Public. What gives?

CS_Agent
Customer Support Agent

@ruk

Thank you for sharing! 🙂

This to me is similar to the problems with FaceTime and iMessage on iOS devices.

 

in this case, it was switching providers.  However, when switching devices from iOS to anything else, one should remember to unsubscribe to the ability to use those features, to prevent such errors.

ruk
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

I ported on July 4, 2018 and the issue was resolved today, July 13, 2018.

 

I didn't raised the issue in a private messages with @CS_Agent until July 6, 2018, however, so, in the end, it took 4 business days to resolve.

will13am
Oracle
Oracle

Surely this has to be automatic even if it takes a bit of time for information to fan out to the various interconnected systems.  Manual intervention would be impractical. 

MoreYummy
Mayor / Maire

Good to know.

So basically port wasnt completed fully, and portion of the service was unsuccessful.  

@ruk Wondering how long does it take to fix it?

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