I share a handful of online accounts with my wife: Amazon, Google, banks, credit cards, investments, etc. They all require a text message verification sent to either my wife’s or my phone. This is a huge pain in the neck, because most of the time, we are not in the same room and therefore cannot see each other’s text messages.
How to Set Up Text Message Forwarding
My wife has been at a breaking point with our Amazon account, which sends me a text message every time someone tries to log in. She couldn’t order, because she couldn’t get into the account, because the text messages were being sent to me, and I was unavailable… You get the picture.
Last night I successfully set up a phone number that forwards text messages to us both, thereby solving this problem! And the best part: it took me only an hour and costs me pennies per month!
Here’s how to set up the forwarding number using a Twilio account. The tricky thing I had to figure out was how to forward the text message to 2 phones. But once I figured it out, it was simple. Here’s the screengrab I wish they had on the instructions:
Other Ways to Forward Text Messages
When I started researching how to forward text messages to more than one person, I first looked at Google Voice (free), then Skype Online Number ($3/mo), and finally at GoDaddy Phone ($10/mo). All of these likely could have worked with some email forwarding and/or workflow-hacking (i.e. my wife and I install the Skype/GoDaddy Phone app). But any way you slice it, those services are not built for this and are more complex than the Twilio solution I ultimately chose.
For my business’ 2-factor, which I share with my employee, I use a shared Skype Online Number account. This is the best solution for shared 2-factor when you have an employee abroad.
Let me know if you have a better idea for how to forward text messages to multiple people!
