Soon to arrive in Japan as an ALT this year, I was wondering if anyone has had any experience keeping their old phone number while on JET? Did you simply just completely switch to a Japanese number or did you manage to maintain it while also obtaining a Japanese phone number? Currently from Canada and pondering over some 2 factor authentication things still attached to my current phone number. Thanks!
9 comments
Get off SMS 2FA immediately. Its shit because its prone to spoofing.
I connected mine to Google Voice, not sure if that’s an option for you. I think it costs me a little money maybe like $10-$20USD but it works totally fine and I can receive/send texts and phone calls.
Edit: I’m also able to use mine for 2FA but I see some people have issues so ESID.
Some people port their number to something like Google voice, but I think you can’t use that for 2 factor identification, so I don’t think it would have helpful for you.
I just switched over all my 2fa because I couldn’t get google voice to work. Pain in the butt but I plan to stay for a few years so worth it to me.
My advice is reliant on one thing, unfortunately: does your phone have dual sim capability?
Mine does, so I simply moved my American sim to the secondary slot, and put the japanese sim I use in the primary. It’s not 100% full functionality, but I can still receive 2FA texts to it, so that’s enough for me.
If yours doesn’t have two sim slots though, this won’t be much help. Sorry about that.
i just switched to a japanese number and cancelled my phone plan. i mean, youre going to be living in japan. when you go back just get a new number…or see if you can reapply and get the same number again if youre still in their system
In my country a lot of banks won’t do overseas number text verification.
My advice is to leave a phone with a parent or someone you can trust to get verification texts as needed in case you need to do something as it’s really hard without that
The sooner these shit companies move to 2FA instead of stupid text based systems the better
You’re from Canada, which unfortunately means Google Voice is off the table. The cheapest option that keeps your phone number on a proper carrier and accessible from Japan is Freedom’s $130/year prepaid plan. You can receive texts for free in Japan, and when you connect to WiFi, you can make calls back to Canada for free too.
I made a huge mistake and cancelled my old phone number before coming to Japan. all the 2 step authentications I can’t access now… it’s really frustrating having a whole bunch of important accounts and services linked to an email other than my main. I can’t reregister any of them (microsoft was the worst!!).
I’d reccomend changing your phone over to a prepaid or something and maintaining your phone number.