Difficulties of registering on Skype without a phone

In order to continue to use Skype as a classic program, one of the requirements must be met - ease of registration (single-factor, without a phone and other redundant actions). Consider the current problems of using Skype and stories about how to do without a phone.

Actually, MS would gladly have strangled this freedom, what they systematically do. Something keeps them from blocking all exits to the end. For example, Google is not seeking to stifle, although it could. There are, apparently, many services in the world that do not allow MS-sheep to say "We just do, like everyone else."

At first, you will have to dwell on the question concerning not only Skype, why in some places it is important not to agree to phones, SMS and registration by place of residence if there is a simple task of using modern Internet communications without consequences. If you want, a little paranoia, but quite a bit of it, but there are a number of ordinary arguments, rather elementary, that have existed since the advent of the Internet and communications.

Why should we consider registration via SMS non-classical?

1. Because there are a lot of services that adhere to the principles of classic registration - mail and password. Therefore, there is still a market for the provision of services for simply registering by mail, without SMS.
2. If, in addition to registering by mail, they strive to introduce a "second factor", it is far from always that its use reaches only the goals you need. Much more important for an advertiser is a goal that he doesn’t talk about - linking your account with your other accounts for future advertising targeting, tracking actions, collecting user statistics on a global geopolitical scale. In other words, when someone needs you, your interests will suffer in unexpected ways.
3. The more connections you leave, the harder it is to track the causes of actions of this service. The service also receives more tools for observation and manipulation. However, it is free, but he needs to somehow monetize this free, not necessarily in the key you need.
4. In different countries there is a different degree of binding phone numbers and personal data. Often it has a completely different level of personalization than using the Internet. Confirming SMS, you sign in your level of personalization before this free service, which often does not have the same share of responsibility to your state as you do with your personalization. In other words, the service potentially gets more action and control over you than you do them. You may be held accountable in the future for some kind of real or perceived violation. And try to attract the service for any, from your point of view, violation.

Subject of the problem: Skype, MS and registration

Why is Skype still?

Why not take and change the service?

1. Each user has many friends, social circle, using the same service.
2. There are some unique users who only need to give Skype for communication.
3. There is, nevertheless, convenience and quality in organizing small video chats, voice chats.
4. There is an integrated simplicity: after registering, you get the amount of convenience, avoiding registration in new places.
5. A number of Skype competitors are generally focused on the telephone and phone number, with the worst abilities of a computer client or its absence. Factoring authorization begins with the phone. However, mail has less risk of compromising personal data.

Finally we got to the bottom of the question. So far this has been an introduction. Now - the problem is: MS strives to periodically and persistently get, besides the mail, your phone number. This does not affect, say, Google Mail with the chat service. Perhaps this is not in the Hangout. However, until now, procedures were found for MS (including a change of account), which avoided phone registration.

Uncompromising persistence in extorting your phone from MS is expressed in the fact that when logging in to the computer client, MS asks you, as usual, the login and password. It does not stop there, and, without ever saying directly that it will not allow you to log in without a phone, offers “different ways” to improve your “privacy” or “security” with one thing - for your privacy and security, a reduction to your phone number is required. confirmation by SMS, with voice confirmation or with a backup mail account, the registration of which (that's a surprise), it turns out, also requires a mandatory phone, the binding of which, again, never speak directly. The most obvious thing you can read is something like "This may not coincide with your opinion" about the need to "increase account security" through the distribution of your numbers.

This is about the same turn as “access restricted” instead of “access blocked” in the known case. And here they will never say that you are not needed with your privacy and you can blame on looking for another service if local orders are not satisfied.

How to register without a phone in Skype?

On this account, I have accumulated several stories in the last few months of 2017-2018, which I want to share, since they have not lost relevance.

• If you have an old account, from the times that do not require telephones, you can sometimes miraculously lose this elvish peace. It was enough for me once to send Skype (hotmail.com) from the backup mail, which I had not used for years, but had access to it, a simple letter with a simple innocuous JS file (20 KB and rather complicated, if anything, but more simple tried it). After that, the letter did not come, the robots rebelled, but, as usual, they have no government, everything is under a big castle in Uncle Bill's empire.

First, they demanded to confirm the mail (yes, just mail; it would seem, what have Skype for?) In 3 ways - 2 with the phone and one from the backup mail, the password I forgot, although the service works. In general, even the disclosure of the phone in this case would not give any rationale for recognizing the mail account

By the way, the same experience with Google mail with a JS file also led to the non-dispatch of a letter (in general, it is logical and instructive - advice - never send open JS files by mail in our time!) . We managed to send the same file to Google (Gmail) for the 3rd time, sending an encrypted RAR-archive with the level of file name encryption including. (The second time there was an attempt to archive with readable names - also failed.) But what is very important and what distinguishes MS for the worse from Google and other normal companies is that letter blocking did not cause, as in MS, a blunt extrusion of the phone, and a case where I could not confirm my authenticity.

And in MS, after failing to write a letter with JS, a number of amazingly disgusting stories went. So, the mail that I used for 15 years, they blocked, the password of which I knew, but did not know the password of the backup mail, and by phone I could not logically prove my involvement. For example, I do not remember the last recipients and the subject of the last letters a few years ago.

After that, they started Skype. Once the mail was “hacked” by a potential hacker, Skype was registered on it - from their point of view, it is logical to ban Skype. Yes, why just ban? Let's first press the phone, then, having received the phone, let's say, how can you prove that you are Sidorov the cashier? No, you are not a cashier, you killed the cashier, and your documents were taken away.

Of course, I did not go with this adventure with them. I had to start a new Skype account.

• The second story. I started the establishment of new Skype (nowadays) with Google mail. Suddenly, with the Google mail, they start their own hurdy-gurdy with the extrusion of the phone. Again, without saying in advance that they will be extorted and that they will not give up the account without a phone. Again, their crown "This may not coincide with your opinion," although it is not a matter of opinion, but of the fact that it is not available.

So, they did not give access via Google mail. Attempt the third.

• The third story. Judging that they do not need any other mail, but they once were ashamed to “send it by the forest”, I began to try registration via live.com (hotmail.com is also in the same name system). I'm looking for a new account from the Skype page, and then - to log in - what do you think, where are they sending me? That's right, to the 3 alternatives to "increased security", in which there are no alternatives to the telephone.

90% of users at this stage will raise their legs and surrender, carry their numbers with a mob crowd into the barns of skype monopolists, and those will silently grin at the width of the herd and the number of upcoming haircuts.

But we know the laws of the hacker case, which suggest that not all paths have been traversed, that disgusting in individual corporations is a working process.

• History 4th. So, we pretend to be a newbie, who first saw live.com. Here, according to the logic of advertisers, it should be lured in every possible way, and here in their policy of extortion a puncture is potentially possible, it is felt. And in fact, this registration path passes without extorting the phone, and then, from the site live.com, you can either enter Skype under the new account through the browser, or the Skype client, about a miracle, with a fresh account - admit. Not without reservation, but admit. Why?

It is easy to understand that otherwise advertisers can not do. The first potential customer, having seen impassable Skype, with a probability of 90% will add a negative opinion about him. They are forced to give access without a telephone, but with the proviso - “in a week, registration by telephone is obligatory”.

As we will see in the next life hacking story, you can get around the week limit, again with blunt extortion in one of the branches of the user's behavior.

• History 5th. How to use a new Skype account for more than a week?

It turned out, and there was a loophole. When I came out of Skype’s client and tried to enter again in the usual way, I came across the same way of extorting the phone - “we will not allow it in any way”. But, knowing the falsity of their previous statements, it is easy to guess that they do not need to believe, but rather, as usual, they should try out the weak points in which they are inconvenient for their clients to put bureaucratic obstacles.

This place was the entrance to the Skype client (Windows, the current version) automatically when opening Skype. Where not allowed at the explicit entrance, do not dare not to let in at the automatic entrance. Why? Obviously, because it will create a sharply negative opinion about the "idle client" among users.

Total

So, on the verge of a foul, MS is now balancing between its advertising interests and respecting the propriety in competition among the remaining single-factor companies and services on the Internet.

You can still use and even register with MS without a phone, but you have to be ready to change your account and warn your respondents about it.

I deliberately did not consider "tricky" ways to use the phone without personal data - a temporary SIM card, permanent to someone else's fictitious name ("in transitions"), permanent to someone else's name. Perhaps there are options from other countries and even registration services in other countries, but is the Skype account worth the fuss about it?

In the comments I would like to hear about what services besides Skype who currently uses, so as not to use registration by phone and at the same time have the convenience of Skype-level at least in parts: chat, video chat. It is known that there are many game chat servers with much better load, but little information about decent video chats.

Is there a possibility to register by mail without a phone among the services of a new wave (oovoo, whatsapp, telegram, ...)? Not for the sake of paranoia, but just wondering how much they are now saving by simple registration by mail?