GroupMe Test Accounts w/out Phone Numbers

[Joel Anderson]

Does GroupMe offer a way to create accounts without requiring phone numbers?

For testing purposes, I'd like to have two or three (or more) test accounts, but it seems I need a unique phone number for each one. Without pestering friends and family I have a very limited quantity of phone numbers.

I appreciate your help!

**Things I've Tried**

1 - re-using my phone number

I created multiple gmail accounts and used them to sign up at GroupMe. The sign-up process requires a phone number, so I provided my own. To my surprise, this didn't create a new GroupMe user, rather, it changed the email address associated with my "real" previously existing GroupMe user for which the phone number was already in use. The phone number acts like a unique identifier in GroupMe's system. Which makes perfect sense but also makes it difficult to create distinct test accounts.

2 - using temp phone numbers

Since phone numbers cannot be re-used, I tried using "fake" phone number services such as:

https://tempophone.com/

https://smsreceivefree.com/

... but these have some problems. In one case I encountered a temp phone number that was previously used by someone else to join GroupMe. Since I was able to retrieve a PIN using the temp number I was able to change the email address and password of that GroupMe account. My apologies to the user whose account that was: I didn't know the phone number was in use on your account until I logged in to GroupMe and (to my surprise) found the GroupMe user was already a member of some groups!

Because of this, I highly recommend against using temp phone numbers to create GroupMe users -- test users or otherwise. If you must do so, do NOT invite any associated GroupMe users to groups that you care about. If you have already invited such a user to one of your groups, I suggest you end the group immediately and create it anew.

[Jake Bathman]

This would be a great feature. I've had some success using a Google Voice number, which you could use your various Gmail accounts to ascertain.

--
Jake Bathman
http://twitter.com/jakebathman

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[kevra...@gmail.com]

Google voice numbers require a real phone number to associate to, and they do not make it possible to link multiple google voice numbers to the same real phone number (I tried). Trying to solve this problem with google voice basically just adds one extra step before it fails. 

On Sunday, April 17, 2016 at 6:56:47 AM UTC-7, Jake Bathman wrote:

This would be a great feature. I've had some success using a Google Voice number, which you could use your various Gmail accounts to ascertain.

--
Jake Bathman
http://twitter.com/jakebathman

On Apr 17, 2016, 8:53 AM -0500, Joel Anderson <sonofs...@gmail.com>, wrote:

Does GroupMe offer a way to create accounts without requiring phone numbers?

For testing purposes, I'd like to have two or three (or more) test accounts, but it seems I need a unique phone number for each one. Without pestering friends and family I have a very limited quantity of phone numbers.

I appreciate your help!

**Things I've Tried**

1 - re-using my phone number

I created multiple gmail accounts and used them to sign up at GroupMe. The sign-up process requires a phone number, so I provided my own. To my surprise, this didn't create a new GroupMe user, rather, it changed the email address associated with my "real" previously existing GroupMe user for which the phone number was already in use. The phone number acts like a unique identifier in GroupMe's system. Which makes perfect sense but also makes it difficult to create distinct test accounts.

2 - using temp phone numbers

Since phone numbers cannot be re-used, I tried using "fake" phone number services such as:

https://tempophone.com/

https://smsreceivefree.com/

... but these have some problems. In one case I encountered a temp phone number that was previously used by someone else to join GroupMe. Since I was able to retrieve a PIN using the temp number I was able to change the email address and password of that GroupMe account. My apologies to the user whose account that was: I didn't know the phone number was in use on your account until I logged in to GroupMe and (to my surprise) found the GroupMe user was already a member of some groups!

Because of this, I highly recommend against using temp phone numbers to create GroupMe users -- test users or otherwise. If you must do so, do NOT invite any associated GroupMe users to groups that you care about. If you have already invited such a user to one of your groups, I suggest you end the group immediately and create it anew.

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[Martin (GroupMe dev)]

Hi,
unfortunately, there is no support for this currently... But i can see how useful it might be for developing on top of our APIs. We'll see...

Regards,
Martin :)

Dne neděle 17. dubna 2016 15:53:56 UTC+2 Joel Anderson napsal(a):

[kevra...@gmail.com]

I switched my company over to discord. I also switched my gaming community over to discord. Not having to force people to register with phone numbers was, in fact, the reason for the switch, but I could not be happier after making the transition. You guys (groupme) are falling behind. Good Luck.