[HN Gopher] Can Minecraft be played without giving MS a Phone#?
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Can Minecraft be played without giving MS a Phone#?
Microsoft is due to start forcing every single account on Minecraft
to a Microsoft if it isn't already, over the next 2 days, I have
read. I have learned that if you make a Microsoft account, their
system auto-locks you out and forces you to provide them a phone
number I play with my family (it's something we've bonded together
over a long time) and we take our privacy seriously, and don't give
up our phone numbers to companies , frequently using burner apps or
other methods to set up stuff. However, Microsoft accounts don't
accept VOIP numbers it seems, and their official guidance is to
find someone near you if you don't have a phone, and use their
phone to validate your account. This seems like a huge risk to
someone else, with Microsoft now having their number (there's
nothing that indicates they don't keep it.) Also, if this is for
spam prevention, then if you have a lot of kids, you would be in
trouble due to multiple accounts sharing the same number unless you
bought every kid a phone. Apparently alternate email addresses
used to be enough, to stop this but the system still automatically
flags you. I don't know if TOTP 2 factor authentication works, but
have read if you submit the reclaim-your-account form with lots of
personal details, Microsoft considers this not-workable if you had
setup MFA on your account and won't intervene. An option with
Microsoft accounts is to set up their own dedicated microsoft
authentication app to get in passwordlessly (but that feature isn't
going to be on the Minecraft launcher, likely) , but this isn't as
clear cut over if it pulls your phone number and other details from
your phone. Does anyone know of a method my family could preserve
their phone number privacy while continuing to play? Is there a
way to set up a Microsoft account with enough authentication that
it doesn't auto-ban you a little bit later and force you to give
them more info to keep the account? I don't know if TOTP is enough,
there's been mixed results per
https://github.com/MultiMC/Launcher/issues/4093 I know some might
wonder about third party clients or as some called them it seems
,hacked clients , but those don't support LAN/multiplayer it
appears. Note: the message Microsoft accounts tell you is that
they detected suspicious activity, but for those who gave them the
info then checked the suspicious activity log in the (new)account,
nothing but their own logins are shown, indicating this might be
more of a phone-number-obtaining thing. I have trouble believing
the tens of millions of players on Minecraft are all able to give
phone numbers, and this seems concerning from a privacy point of
view.
Author : OrbitalShotput_
Score : 40 points
Date : 2022-03-09 18:03 UTC (4 hours ago)
| rstat1 wrote:
| My MS account does not have a phone number attached to it. Had
| the same account for over a decade. Never been locked out over
| it.
|
| I do use the Authenticator app on my phone to login in though.
| OrbitalShotput_ wrote:
| I suspect the MS Authenticator app is why- the question is then
| of course, does the app give Microsoft your phone number on
| it's own once installed?
| bitwize wrote:
| Time to get into MineTest. It's open source and fairly mature;
| got some great games and mods for it.
|
| It doesn't matter how many 24k eggs a golden goose lays; if a
| bigco like Microsoft buys it, they're sharpening the axe to kill
| it.
| moltke wrote:
| Minetest is neat but it lacks the "soul" of Minecraft. I don't
| know how else to say it, it's not "fun" for some reason.
| Despite being free I've never managed to get my friends into
| the game.
| polski-g wrote:
| You can disable online-mode in server.properties and play
| multiplayer with no account at all.
| 1shooner wrote:
| As you might expect, this does disable the 'whitelist' mod
| functionality.
| dmonitor wrote:
| No skins either, right?
| hertzrat wrote:
| Microsoft will let you sign up for an account without a phone
| number. They will then fake a security response, citing
| suspicious behaviour (on an unused account with zero activity no
| less) to force you to provide a phone number. After providing the
| number, you may confirm: zero activity whatsoever, let alone
| suspicious activity
| warning26 wrote:
| Instagram does this exact same thing as well, and it's such an
| annoying dark pattern.
| OrbitalShotput_ wrote:
| This is indeed what I was citing in the opening post- it's
| effectively requiring a phone number.
| haunter wrote:
| Pirate it
|
| >I know some might wonder about third party clients or as some
| called them it seems ,hacked clients , but those don't support
| LAN/multiplayer it appears.
|
| They do of course if the server is also cracked. Host on your
| own, which I assume you already do.
| moltke wrote:
| The game is easier to run on Linux if you pirate it anyway
| thanks to the awful new launcher they made.
| jiffygist wrote:
| Offline mode only means you can't auth with mojang servers,
| there are many minecraft servers that use their own
| authentication via server plugin instead of mojang account.
|
| Btw are there any opensource clients that support offline mode?
| testesttest wrote:
| You can buy a prepaid SIM card with SMS support for 5$ that are
| good for a month. I have a stack on my desk for stuff like this.
| OrbitalShotput_ wrote:
| Question: With this method, what would you do if , in a few
| months, Microsoft flags the account and asks you to verify with
| a text SMS? (I'm aware if one sets up TOTP hopefully they
| wouldn't do this, but one never knows) - can you reactivate the
| SIM smoothly?
| gruez wrote:
| 1. create account with phone #
|
| 2. add TOTP authentication
|
| 3. remove phone #
| vvoid wrote:
| I share your concerns. I created a dedicated-purpose Microsoft
| account by following Mojang's official migration link. The
| process went smoothly and I have not been asked for a phone
| number. I am using Fastmail with a custom domain and set up an
| alias. Everything works including the custom launcher. I
| completed the entire process on Linux.
|
| I agree with other observations on this thread that individual
| accounts and phone number authentication would not be safe
| assumptions for many minecraft households. It will be difficult
| for Microsoft to tighten this process further.
| OrbitalShotput_ wrote:
| This is a imporant data point-
|
| I have for the past couple of weeks, tried making microsoft
| accounts , where I set up 2FA with TOTP, set up an alternate
| email, even pulled the account recovery code from the security
| section.
|
| One was banned after a week, the other one hasn't been banned
| yet, but was made a little bit later than the first one's
| creation- so it might just be a matter of time. Neither one has
| a phone number, but I did notice i was in a different location
| when the first one got banned, so I suspect if you play on a
| laptop or mobile device and the IP does not match up, you're
| considered gone by the system. If it's not a auto-timer as it
| seems to somewhat be.
|
| This was on Windows in both instances.
|
| The difficulty here is , if it does flag it- how would you
| recover it without giving them a phone number, since you
| couldn't access something allowing you to migrate to a
| different microsoft account at that stage.
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(page generated 2022-03-09 23:02 UTC)