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| How to use WhatsApp without a SIM or RICA |
Please note that this article is solely for academic functions and to detail what services may be accessed online by anyone with an online browser. We tend to don't encourage the illegal or illicit activity of any nature.
To get a WhatsApp account you need a mobile phone number, as after you set up a WhatsApp account the service messages you a security code to check that you just are the owner of the aforementioned mobile phone number.
But to get a mobile phone number in South Africa, you need to buy a SIM card from a mobile operator and register it in your name as a part of the RICA method.
This involves you taking proof of address and your ID to a store and having the SIM, and its number, connected to you.
After registering countless SIMs at MyBroadband over the years, we tend to tested if we may create a working WhatsApp account without having to buy a SIM and undergo the RICA process.
After a couple of minutes of Google looking and visits to news websites that gave the impression of they were dying to send us malware, we tend to come across a site known as Proovl.
It is listed as a platform that has a “reliable channel for incoming and outgoing knowledge, communications and partnerships”.
It runs from Estonia and primarily offers you a variety of mobile phone numbers you'll rent for an exact period – sort of a “virtual” cellular phone number.
We registered an account on the site, using an email address solely, created a password, and that we were smart to go.
To buy a mobile phone number to receive an SMS, you choose the “SMS Numbers” choice and are given a listing of numbers obtainable with entirely different country codes.
We went to a United Kingdom number, which might price €5.00 for the day.
To buy the number, you need to 1st purchase “credits” on the site – with one credit equalling one euro.
It was at now that we became hesitant to use the service, however once checking the payment choices we saw Proovl accepted Bitcoin.
Thanks to its anonymity and security, the sole risk we tend to currently faced once buying the credits with Bitcoin was our cash getting taken. This was acceptable.
Proovl was also providing bonus credits if you paid by Bitcoin. Therefore we purchased 15 credits – costing us just over R235 – by sending Bitcoin to the address given by Proovl.
The payment went through in minutes, and around an hour later registered in our Proovl account.
With our credits topped up, we purchased a United Kingdom cellphone number. The images below show the Proovl interface and our number purchase.
When making a brand new Gmail account, Google can ask you for your mobile phone number. Therefore, it will send you a verification code to finish the setup of your account.
We created a username, email address, and password in Gmail then proceeded to the verification code screen. We entered our Proovl United Kingdom number and hit send.
The code came through to the “messages” tab in our Proovl account presently when we requested it, and when getting into the code into our Gmail setup, we had created a Gmail account anonymously.
We downloaded WhatsApp on the phone and set it up.
The image below shows the home screen of the smartphone, which it doesn't have a SIM in it. (It was connected to an active Wi-Fi connection.)
This included the number verification page that needed us to input a code sent from WhatsApp to our declared cellphone number.
All worked as supposed, and also the screenshots below show however we created the WhatsApp account and received the verification code from WhatsApp via SMS to our Proovl account.
After getting into the verification code into WhatsApp, the account was good to go. We tend to send a check message to a South African number, and they received it – all worked because it should.
As the Proovl number, we tend to purchase was solely valid for daily, we enabled 2FA (two-factor authentication) in WhatsApp.
This is aimed at protecting our account from being confiscated in the event some other person rents the mobile phone number we used. With 2FA enabled, a code we tend to create within the app should be entered to line up the WhatsApp account on a brand new phone.
We also removed the mobile phone number as an account recovery choice in our new Gmail account, just in case the number is rented out again.
The image below shows our no-SIM WhatsApp account having sent a message to a legitimate number and its WhatsApp account.
To get a WhatsApp account you need a mobile phone number, as after you set up a WhatsApp account the service messages you a security code to check that you just are the owner of the aforementioned mobile phone number.
But to get a mobile phone number in South Africa, you need to buy a SIM card from a mobile operator and register it in your name as a part of the RICA method.
This involves you taking proof of address and your ID to a store and having the SIM, and its number, connected to you.
After registering countless SIMs at MyBroadband over the years, we tend to tested if we may create a working WhatsApp account without having to buy a SIM and undergo the RICA process.
Virtual number
The first step was obtaining a mobile phone number without buying a SIM.After a couple of minutes of Google looking and visits to news websites that gave the impression of they were dying to send us malware, we tend to come across a site known as Proovl.
It is listed as a platform that has a “reliable channel for incoming and outgoing knowledge, communications and partnerships”.
It runs from Estonia and primarily offers you a variety of mobile phone numbers you'll rent for an exact period – sort of a “virtual” cellular phone number.
We registered an account on the site, using an email address solely, created a password, and that we were smart to go.
To buy a mobile phone number to receive an SMS, you choose the “SMS Numbers” choice and are given a listing of numbers obtainable with entirely different country codes.
We went to a United Kingdom number, which might price €5.00 for the day.
To buy the number, you need to 1st purchase “credits” on the site – with one credit equalling one euro.
It was at now that we became hesitant to use the service, however once checking the payment choices we saw Proovl accepted Bitcoin.
Thanks to its anonymity and security, the sole risk we tend to currently faced once buying the credits with Bitcoin was our cash getting taken. This was acceptable.
Proovl was also providing bonus credits if you paid by Bitcoin. Therefore we purchased 15 credits – costing us just over R235 – by sending Bitcoin to the address given by Proovl.
The payment went through in minutes, and around an hour later registered in our Proovl account.
With our credits topped up, we purchased a United Kingdom cellphone number. The images below show the Proovl interface and our number purchase.
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| Select number |
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| Proovl number price |
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| My Number |
WhatsApp and Gmail
Once we had the mobile phone number, we tested if it worked by signing up for a Gmail account.When making a brand new Gmail account, Google can ask you for your mobile phone number. Therefore, it will send you a verification code to finish the setup of your account.
We created a username, email address, and password in Gmail then proceeded to the verification code screen. We entered our Proovl United Kingdom number and hit send.
The code came through to the “messages” tab in our Proovl account presently when we requested it, and when getting into the code into our Gmail setup, we had created a Gmail account anonymously.
The real check, however, was WhatsApp.
Using the anonymous Gmail account we had created merely, we created a Google profile on an Android smartphone. This was, therefore, we may access the Google Play store to download WhatsApp.We downloaded WhatsApp on the phone and set it up.
The image below shows the home screen of the smartphone, which it doesn't have a SIM in it. (It was connected to an active Wi-Fi connection.)
Smartphone No SIM
Using our United Kingdom number, we went through the WhatsApp setup method.This included the number verification page that needed us to input a code sent from WhatsApp to our declared cellphone number.
All worked as supposed, and also the screenshots below show however we created the WhatsApp account and received the verification code from WhatsApp via SMS to our Proovl account.
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| WhatsApp Code |
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| Verification code Messages |
After getting into the verification code into WhatsApp, the account was good to go. We tend to send a check message to a South African number, and they received it – all worked because it should.
As the Proovl number, we tend to purchase was solely valid for daily, we enabled 2FA (two-factor authentication) in WhatsApp.
This is aimed at protecting our account from being confiscated in the event some other person rents the mobile phone number we used. With 2FA enabled, a code we tend to create within the app should be entered to line up the WhatsApp account on a brand new phone.
We also removed the mobile phone number as an account recovery choice in our new Gmail account, just in case the number is rented out again.
The image below shows our no-SIM WhatsApp account having sent a message to a legitimate number and its WhatsApp account.
