As the sibling commenter pointed out, in their case, it totally failed to create a meaningful identifier, because he used some other person's phone to get past the ridiculous gate.
replyIt’s not ridiculous. It’s for you to verify. It’s setting up 2FA. How can you not understand that?
reply2FA presumes user-ownership of the second factor, and that possession of the second factor authenticates that the possessor is the account owner. It's ridiculous because in the OP's case, he literally had someone else temporarily hand him the second factor in front of the clerk: the 2FA didn't really authenticate anything, and the clerk could even see that.
replyEven if it was useful in OPs case -- which it wasn't -- SMS 2FA is frowned upon by all modern security standards because it has several severe security issues.
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