For anyone who didn’t know, Talkatone phone numbers work and are dirt cheap. This is good news for people who are blocked by this. However, with the workaround being so easy, smurfs and cheaters can make a new account for even cheaper than in OW1. In other words, the SMS Protect requirement does not function as intended, it only blocks legitimate players. It needs to go back to the drawing board completely, and at least exempt OW1 accounts in the meantime.
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I mean give it another week and some Reddit is going to have a list of bypass options.
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I wish this information were more visible on both Reddit and the forums, a lot of people still don’t know about it. This easy workaround is getting drowned out by the complaining. And I think exposing this is more likely to get Blizzard to change something than angry comments are. I’m guessing the third party library they’re using can’t easily be changed to block Talkatone.
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Yeah. And the thing is that, this won’t work to keep smurfs out. If they’re desperate enough smurfs WILL find a way to get around it.
So I’m gonna be keeping an eye on the Reddit and see if there’s gonna be a list of work around a popping up at the end of the month.
I wonder if people will notice that the smurfs never went away. Blizzard did remove levels and the ability to see ranks so to most players it will seem like the smurfs are gone…
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Yup and if cheaters or smurfs do carrys as a service they can make that that 1 dollar charge back and make profit
I’m right there with you OP.
I think it’s mostly matter of whether they can identify if a number is being used by Talkatone, which they may not be able to.
Talkatone uses a lot of Onvoy numbers in the US, for example.
I actually think the smurfing problem has always been overblown, and without the borders or levels, few people will notice it anymore. I’m more worried about ban evasion for cheaters and toxic behavior.
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It’s true, this is an easy gateway for smurfing still. Honestly don’t know how they are going to go around banning them when masses can come in.
that’s why i said it was never about security, but just data harvesting and pushing whatever service provider they want
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Pretty much knew this would happen.
THIS IS BS! Talkatone is a VOIP service and VOIPs are not elegible to create accounts.
iv been saying, block the credit cards and accounts linked to cheating players, but they would never keep cheaters from giving them money
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BuT iT wIlL pRoTeCt AgAiNsT sMuRfS aNd ChEaTeRs!!! 
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Thats what I said but it works according to so many people and so I have no idea how it does??
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It VOIP which Blizzard doesn’t accept as a verification method.
I know it’s VOIP, but it works.
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Still works though oddly so your guess is as good as mine.
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I don’t know any Smurf player who would go out of their way to pay for multiple phone numbers just to Smurf. Isn’t there like a limit to how many phone numbers can be under your name too? 
SMS verification isn’t supposed to stop smurfing. It’s there to reduce the number of smurfs significantly.