The phone verification system, known as SMS Protect by Activision Blizzard, is intended to reduce toxic behavior among players by preventing them from creating an infinite number of new accounts in order to avoid bans or cheating. According to Activision Blizzard’s support page, “limiting the number of free accounts that a single person can create helps keep players accountable for their actions, which in turn reduces toxicity and cheating and ensures a positive community experience for all players.”
The issue is that SMS Protect is only compatible with text-enabled mobile phones and does not treat all phone numbers equally. According to a separate Battle.net support page, “prepaid phones may not work with the phone notification service.” It is also incompatible with VoIP numbers. This limits the service to players with postpaid cellular plans, which may be out of reach for many players around the world.
