Are there any ways to avoid handing over your real phone number, besides having an extra SIM? Lots of places/services want SMS verification, but i rarely want to hand out my actual phone number.
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Google Voice often works.
ChatGPT recognizes Google voice numbers for what they are.
A google service doesn’t really inspire trust in privacy? I’m trying to move away from Google services as much as possible.
SMS is unencrypted, insecure, and not private to begin with. Your SIM provider can see everything you send plus track you via cell towers.
As someone who is currently de-googling my own stuff I understand but wanting google services but please don’t think it being Google is why it’s not Privacy focused.
Its simply to avoid handing out my real phone number to companies so they can use it to match data from other datasets that link it to me. If im giving them my real phone number, i might as well also just give them my real email and not an alias.
Then a Google voice number is fine for that. Just create a junk Gmail and had that number out.
I’d rather be 1 of billions of Google users instead of 1 of thousands on another smaller service. But a prepaid burner phone that doesn’t require any sort of personal information would be the ultimate privacy and still get you SMS capability.
That’s certainly a different approach than what I do.
This. Works for many, but there are some services that recognize it’s a VoIP service and won’t allow it (I think discord was one that won’t work)
Another option is a burner phone, which are relatively cheap. You have to use them periodically or they’ll disable and recycle the number, but you can typically find them for around 25$.