The difficulty 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 (one-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 strangle this freedom, which they are systematically engaged in. Something keeps them from blocking all the exits to the end. For example, Google does not seek to choke, although it could. Apparently, there are many services in the world that do not allow MS-sheep to say "We just do like everyone else."

At first, I’ll have to stop at a question that concerns not only Skype, why it is important in places not to agree to phones, SMS and registration at the place of residence, if there is a simple task of using modern Internet communications without consequences. If you want, a little paranoia, but it is very little, and there are a number of ordinary arguments, quite elementary, existing since the advent of the Internet and communications.

Why should registration via SMS be considered non-classical?

1. Because there are a lot of services that adhere to the principles of classical registration - mail and password. Therefore, there is still a market for providing services for simply registering by mail, without SMS.
2. If, in addition to registering by mail, they are trying to introduce the "second factor", by no means always its use reaches only the goals you need. A much more important goal for the advertiser, which he does not talk about, is to connect the 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 the most unexpected way.
3. The more connections you leave, the more difficult it is to track the reasons for the actions of this service. The service, on the other hand, gets more surveillance and manipulation tools. However, it’s free, but it needs to somehow monetize this free, not necessarily in the way you want.
4. Different countries have varying degrees of linking phone numbers and personal data. Often it has a completely different level of personalization than using the Internet. Confirming SMS, you sign your personalization level with 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, a service potentially gets more exposure and control than you do. You may be held liable in the future for any actual or alleged violation. And try to attract the service for any, in your opinion, violation.

Subject matter: Skype, MS and registration

Why is Skype still?

Why not take and change the service?

1. Each user has many friends, a circle of friends using the same service.
2. There are such unique users who need only Skype for communication.
3. There is, nevertheless, convenience and quality in organizing small video chats, voice chats.
4. There is integrated simplicity: after registering, you get a sum of amenities, avoiding registration in new places.
5. A number of Skype competitors are generally focused on the phone and the phone number, with the worst capabilities of the computer client or its absence. The factorization of authorization begins with the phone. However, mail has fewer risks of compromising personal data.

Finally, we got to the bottom of the issue. So far this has been an introduction. Now - the problem is: MS periodically and persistently obtains, in addition to mail, your phone number. This does not suffer, say, Google mail with a chat service. This may not be in Hangout. However, until now, procedures were being sought for MS (including account change) that avoided registering the phone.

An inexorable perseverance is expressed in extorting your phone from MS in that when you log in to the computer client, MS asks you, as usual, for your username and password. It does not stop there, and never saying directly that it will not allow logging in without a phone, it offers "different ways" to improve your "privacy" or "security" with one essence - for your privacy and security you need to reduceto your phone number - with SMS confirmation, with voice confirmation or with a backup mail account, the registration of which (such a surprise), it turns out, also requires a mandatory phone, which is again never said directly. The most free thing that you can read is something like "This may not coincide with your opinion" about the need to "increase account security" through the distribution of their numbers.

This is roughly the same turnover as “access restricted” instead of “access blocked” in a known case. So here they will never say that you are not needed with your privacy and can blame for looking for another service if local orders do not suit you.

How to register without a phone on Skype?

In this regard, I have accumulated several stories over the past few months of 2017-2018, which I want to share, since they have not lost relevance.

• If your account is old, from the time that does not require phones, you can sometimes miraculously lose this elven peace. It was enough for me to send once from Skype's backup mail (hotmail.com), which I had not used for years, but had access to it, a simple letter with a simple harmless JS file (20 KB and rather complicated, if anything,, but simpler ones tried it). After that, the letter did not reach, the robots rebelled, and, as usual, there is no government for them, everything is under a large castle in Uncle Bill's empire.

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

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

And in MS, after not passing the letter with JS, a whole series of stories, surprising in their disgusting, went. So, they blocked the mail that I used for about 15 years, the password of which I knew, but did not know the password of the backup mail, and by telephone I could not logically prove my involvement. For example, I don’t remember the last recipients and topics of the last letters a few years ago.

After that, they took up Skype. Since a potential hacker "cracked" the mail, and Skype is registered on it - from their point of view, it is logical to ban Skype. Yes, why just ban? First, let's get the phone out, then, having received the phone, let's say, and how do you prove that you are Sidorov, the cashier? No, you are not a cashier, you killed a cashier, and you took the documents.

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

• The second story. I started the new Skype (in our time) with Google mail. Suddenly it turned out that with Google mail they at some point start their barrel organ with extorting a phone. Again, without saying in advance that they would extort and that under no circumstances would they give up an account without a phone. Again, their main "This may not coincide with your opinion", although it is not the opinion, but the fact that it is inaccessible.

So, they did not give access via Google mail. The third attempt.

• The third story. Having reasoned that they don’t need other people's mails, but they’ll once hesitate to “send them by the forest”, I began to try registration through live.com (hotmail.com is also included in the same name system). I am looking for a new account from the Skype page, and here - to log in - what do you think, where do they send me? Correctly, to 3 alternatives to "increase security", in which there are no alternatives to the phone.

90% of users at this stage will raise their paws and surrender, carry their numbers in a dull crowd to the barns of Skype monopolists, and they will silently grin at the width of the herd and the amount of upcoming haircuts.

But we know the laws of hacking, which suggest that not all paths have been traveled, that disgust in individual corporations is a work process.

• History 4th. So, we pretend to be a newbie who first saw live.com. Here, according to the logic of advertisers, he should be lured in every way, and here in their extortion policy a puncture is possible, it is felt. And in fact, this registration path goes without extorting the phone, and then, from the live.com website, you can enter Skype through a browser using a new account, or let Skype into the Skype client, lo and behold, with a fresh account. Not at all without reservation, but let in. Why?

It is easy to understand that advertisers cannot do otherwise. The first potential client, upon seeing an impenetrable Skype, with a 90% probability will add up a negative opinion about him. They are forced to give access without a phone, but with the caveat - "after a week, registration by phone is required."

As we will see in the next life hack story, you can get around the week restriction, again with stupid extortion in one of the user behavior branches.

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

It turned out, and there was a loophole. When I left the Skype client and tried to log in again in the usual way, I came across the same method of extorting a phone - "do not let it go 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, try weaknesses in which it is inconvenient for their clients to put bureaucratic obstacles.

This place turned out to be the entrance to the Skype client (Windows, the current version) automatically when you open Skype. Where they didn’t let in with an explicit entrance, they dare not to let in with an automatic entrance. Why? Obviously, because this 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 decency in competition among the remaining one-factor companies and Internet services.

You can still use and even register in MS without a phone, but you must be prepared to change your account and warn your respondents about this.

I deliberately did not consider the “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 there then a Skype account with such fuss about it?

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

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