kleiba

I have genuinely no idea why I need a smartphone to get a line of credit, and that there is no alternative for people who don't have one.

Also, the thought that we as a married couple are not an entity is strange to me, but I guess that's the modern way of thinking, and I am old.

What for? It was a mandatory step but my wife and I will manage the credit through an app on her phone. Minimally, I should have the option to waive it.

I know I'm in the minority but I value privacy higher than convenience. I'm aware that not having a smart phone does not automatically equal total privacy, but I just cannot get myself to have a personal tracking device on me 24/7.

Well, my case is the best proof of that: the phone number I ended up using was my mom's.

It's most definitely baloney because I also had to provide ID. So, certainly there is no way I could identify myself "even more" by giving them a phone number than by giving them a government issued ID.

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

No, I don't really use a lot of service that require 2FA and for the ones I have to (e.g. work), there's always been a workaround.

But this might not really have been a 2FA case - I mean, I was physically sitting in the bank.

My wife and I had an appointment last week to apply for a line of credit. We talked it all through with the clerk and decided to go for it, so he started the whole process on his computer.

His jaw dropped half-way through when he asked for my wife's and my phone number, and I had to tell him that I don't own a smart phone.

Turns out you must have a smart phone because the system sends you some kind of code to verify your identity. Let that sink in: I am sitting in front of the clerk, but in order to identify me, he needs me to give him some phone number.

The only way we could finalize the application is by me asking my mother whether I could use her phone number briefly to get this over with. She forwared the code to my wife's phone. That worked in the end -- but so much for "identifying me".

Amazing - an acquaintance of ours when we lived in Germany a couple of years ago had a similar idea. But she found that telemedicine + prescription drugs (and possibly advertising law) are among the most regulated areas in a country already known for its red tape.

I didn't follow up what became of her startup idea, but there's no way she could have ever gotten it off the ground in just two months, like the guy from the article and his brother. More like two years...

Not enough information here to make informed comments.

Interesting. Where we currently live, kids carry all books back and forth between home and school every day in giant backpacks.

That's possibly the first time that "skyrocketed" and "5%" have been used together in one sentence.

...or to tighten them.