Guides to SMS verification
How virtual numbers work, and where they fall down.
What do these guides cover?
Four questions people actually hit: how to receive a code without giving up your own number, why a code sometimes never arrives, how to pay without the payment identifying you, and what actually gets an account flagged. Each is written to be useful whether or not you buy anything here.
- How to receive an SMS code without a phone numberWhat a virtual number is, what it can and cannot do, and the steps from creating an account to reading the code.
- Paying for SMS verification with MoneroWhy the payment, not the number, is usually what identifies you — what Monero fixes, how to pay with it here, and what it does not protect.
- The verification code never arrived — what to doWhy verification codes fail, how to tell which cause you are looking at in under a minute, and how to retry without spending more than you need to.
- Virtual numbers and account bansWhat actually gets an account flagged, which choices raise the risk and which lower it, and the quieter way most people lose an account.
Where should you start?
If you have never used a virtual number, start with receiving a code without a phone number. If you have one and it is not working, start with the guide on codes that never arrive — most failures happen before a message is ever sent, and it explains how to tell which case you are in.