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I don't think the assumption that SMS is enough is valid anymore.

My wife's elderly aunt has a flip phone that can receive SMS but not MMS. We just went thru an "identity verification" procedure with a major bank last week that sends MMS, not SMS, and could not reach her flip phone.

The whole ordeal was a huge pain in the ass and if my wife and I weren't there to help her it would have been completely impenetrable to her.

by jeroenhd1 hours ago|

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MMS is ancient. Ancient enough that my carrier disabled it entirely. Maybe the flip phone UI is shitty, or the carrier hasn't supplied the necessary APN info to the phone, or the phone hasn't been set up to use that APN because of a bug, or they're using some kind of modernized, non-standard MMS media type or something, but there's no way that phone can't receive MMS at all.

by EvanAnderson1 hours ago|

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Like I said in my other comment - She can't receive a message with a photo from me. Just text, she can. It's an old phone, I think a Kyocera, and I believe her carrier is Cricket Wireless.

by throwawaypath2 hours ago|

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>My wife's elderly aunt has a flip phone that can receive SMS but not MMS.

Doubt it, model number?

>We just went thru an "identity verification" procedure with a major bank last week that sends MMS, not SMS, and could not reach her flip phone.

Double doubt it, verification services do not use MMS. It would be against NIST standards and not a single verification software sends MMSs. I work in this space. MMS is being deprecated across the globe, multiple telcos have already entirely disabled MMS at the network level.

You're likely confusing getting a verification number in the banking app, not SMS/MMS.

by EvanAnderson1 hours ago|

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I don't have the make / model of her phone. I suppose it could be an issue with her phone plan, or settings on her phone. I don't have tons of experience in the wireless telco space and I'm sure I'm abusing terminology.

My Android phone says "SMS" under the "bubble", next to the time, when I send my wife's aunt a message. If I attempt to attach a photo to a message to her (which I've always thought was "MMS") she never receives the photo or any text I send with the photo. Nothing.

re: the identify verification

We had the bank send the message to my wife's phone. She received a message with a link to a website in the native text messaging app on her iPhone. My wife absolutely doesn't have the bank's "app" installed. The website linked in the message used her camera to photograph her aunt's ID and face. I don't know what color the "bubble" was on my wife's iPhone, which I know has some ability to differentiate SMS vs iMessage.

My aunt can receive text messages. She couldn't receive this message. That's what I know.

by kube-system49 minutes ago|

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> multiple telcos have already entirely disabled MMS at the network level.

Really? Are they just presuming all of their customer can use RCS now? Or am I missing something?

by kleiba3 hours ago|

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I could also buy a smartphone. The point is that I shouldn't have to.

by mbreese3 hours ago|

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Sometimes the code must be received through the bank’s app. I went though this process recently to open a new account (at a bank where I already had other accounts). I didn’t think much of it at the time, but if you didn’t have or want a smartphone, this could be a major problem.