My wife and I have been using Google voice and we were out of the US for over a year. Since then we have visited but we were gone over a year before we did. I don’t even know how Google would really check where I was because I can VPN, spoof my gps, login from multiple devices… Etc. so how would they realistically know? Anyway I don’t have any reason to believe that they’ve ever tried nor was I warned about potentially losing my number based on my location when I set it up.
You have to pay one time to port your number over to Google voice and you really have to do it before you leave because you need a different throwaway number that you can verify on your device the first time you set it up. You can use a cheap prepaid or even a free mint sim trial. If you get a new phone while you’re out of the country it can be a little bit of a headache to get it working on the new phone, it’s hidden in settings, but it always works on the computer and it can be done on the phone too. The best part in my opinion about parking my number with voice is that I can continue to use it. I don’t have to teach elderly family members to use apps so I can contact them, I just call them like normal. All my existing 2FA works but once you port your number a lot of sites can tell that your number is now a virtual number and they won’t allow you to set it up for 2FA. Overall though, I definitely recommend it.
My wife and I have been using Google voice and we were out of the US for over a year. Since then we have visited but we were gone over a year before we did. I don’t even know how Google would really check where I was because I can VPN, spoof my gps, login from multiple devices… Etc. so how would they realistically know? Anyway I don’t have any reason to believe that they’ve ever tried nor was I warned about potentially losing my number based on my location when I set it up. You have to pay one time to port your number over to Google voice and you really have to do it before you leave because you need a different throwaway number that you can verify on your device the first time you set it up. You can use a cheap prepaid or even a free mint sim trial. If you get a new phone while you’re out of the country it can be a little bit of a headache to get it working on the new phone, it’s hidden in settings, but it always works on the computer and it can be done on the phone too. The best part in my opinion about parking my number with voice is that I can continue to use it. I don’t have to teach elderly family members to use apps so I can contact them, I just call them like normal. All my existing 2FA works but once you port your number a lot of sites can tell that your number is now a virtual number and they won’t allow you to set it up for 2FA. Overall though, I definitely recommend it.