I have a question, what do companies do with your phone number ? can they trace who you are and what you do ?

  • JohnBrownsDream [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    If you might ever need to be reached at the number being shared there’s always the route of VoIP products like Google Voice (free), or Twilio or MySudo (not free), where one can create virtual numbers for different use cases. In general it’s more secure to share a VoIP number anyway since it isn’t vulnerable to the same SIM swapping attacks that cell numbers are. I don’t know that it’s possible to create a Google Voice account without providing a real cell #. One could probably get around that with a burner phone.

    Where there is only a short-term need for a reachable number for SMS verification or communication purposes there are services that provide temporary SMS numbers, like mobilesms.io. Because these numbers are recycled frequently, definitely don’t use them to register anything important like a bank account or email address.

    • VolunTerry
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      1 year ago

      A lot of services actively disable VoIP numbers from being used for registration or submission.