Cricket Phone so Authenticator

I had a physical authenticator, I lost it. My fault. So I contact support to get it removed so I can have the mobile one. Download to my phone. Now however I can’t use this one because I have Cricket as my service provider? Has anyone had this happen as well. I can’t be the only person playing wow who uses Cricket.

Prepaid and certain carriers ( cricket is the common one ) don’t support the Authenticator.
Actually going to reword that, don’t support SMS from Blizzard to be able to activate the Authenticator and don’t support SMS protect.

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Some prepaid plans do not work with Blizzard’s system, sorry. Some numbers are recycled from prior prepaid plans also, and may not work. There is no real work around to this.

If it helps, I used to have tracfone, and it worked fine at that time. Not sure what systems are considered prepaid and not compatible.

Edit: It’s not the number and authenticator, but the SMS messaging component.

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That is crazy. No other thing I have ever signed up for has had this problem. Not Microsoft, not Sony. Not Ubisoft or EA. Only Blizzard lol. Very frustrating

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Thank you though for the quick responses

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Does verizon pre paid work? Its my Iphone and works exactly the same as having a contract with them, I have a data plan and everything. However I just pay month to month rather than being screwed over by being bound to a contract.

Not likely. Blizzard doesn’t control what phones are considered valid, that is done by the FCC. Most pre-paid and discount cell phone providers buy blocks of numbers that are not valid as they are cheaper. The only way you can tell is to input the number into your Blizzard Account and then you would find out.

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All Verizon numbers at this point are recycled tho lmao. No one gets an old school 752 Verizon number anymore. My area code is 959 just like any other Verizon phone if I had a contract.

Its not a burner.

Your best option as of now.

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It’s less about the provider and more about the number and how it’s registered. So, Verizon or Cricket or Tmobile - if it’s registered as a prepaid number it won’t currently work within this system.

We’ve shared feedback up about this, we know it’s a big hurdle for many. But at this time, there’s not much we can do directly.

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Thanks for stating this since it does show that a struggle is acknowledged by Blizzard. Hopefully a change is able to make it down the pipe at some point, but at the very least thank you for communicating this and letting affected players know that they’re not being ignored.

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Individual companies have little impact upon this issue which is essentially an fcc regulatory matter.

Individual complaints, however, are sometimes factored into regulatory changes at one level or another. Complaints that are not made directly to the fcc, don’t get considered at all.

To make an fcc complaint,
https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us

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I’m not affected by it, I was just thanking Kalviery for making it known that Blizz understands the frustrations and are aware since many people think Blizz doesn’t care. It’s good to see that sort of communication and as much as I berate Blizz for not communicating, I’ll definitely make it known when I do appreciate their communication.

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Just an update on my end, my Verizon pre paid number works. This whole pre paid thing is for “burners”. Seems there is a lot of confusion here between the difference of a a pre paid burner like cricket and paying month to month with an actual service provider.

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It all depends on how the FCC classified your particular phone number. If it is a prepaid number, it can very well be set either way depending on what they set it to before your phone provider gave you that number. Mine is on Metro and still works, as it was originally set for a full service account by AT&T.

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Correct. The major issue here is when number portability became a thing.

In the example Jetsum used, I almost guarantee you that the number was.ported to Metro from ATT. At the FCC level, it still flagged as a quote normal phone, not a prepaid service, which Metro is, the prepaid service of T Mobile.

Carriers purchase their numbers from the FCC, so when a number gets ported in, and later canceled, it goes back into the pool of available numbers after X amount of days.

This is why some Crickett, Metro, etc numbers work, and some do not.

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You can buy a new physical authenticator from Amazon.

I did…it works great, it’s just that I use a static IP on my computer systems so I only had to use it the first time.

There is a problem with the Amazon listings, in that the company who made them haven’t in a while. They might be used, but even now the battery is not getting fresher, and they had a limited life span. Just a fyi

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(post deleted by author)

o.O

No, this isn’t discrimination any more than they discriminate against people without internet.

Not being able to customize a LFG title is hardly a punishment. You can still start groups and the game will provide a title for you.

My guess would be that this actually helps to curb abuse from malicious parties that use throw-away numbers once they get caught breaking rules etc.

If you feel that there should be a change, you’ll want to either use the in-game suggestion feature or post over in the General forums.

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