Show HN: Call Me Private Virtual Number Service | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Call Me Private Virtual Number Service

callmeprivate.com

22 pointsmattbgates46 comments

Hi HN, it is an honor to present to you a tool that I've been developing for a few months now. Call Me Private (https://callmeprivate.com) allows you mask your real phone numbers behind virtual numbers for better privacy. You can make and receive calls with local numbers from around the United States and Canada. You may also purchase toll-free numbers if you are in the U.S. and Canada, a must-have for entrepreneurs, startups, and all businesses.

Just some great features you can do with your virtual number:

* forward incoming calls to a specific number

* record incoming and outgoing calls

* turn your number into a conference room

* turn your number into a message-only system (text or audio mp3/wav)

* turn your number into a voicemail-only system w/email and text option

* block individual callers

* block all callers

There are no contracts, setup fees, or cancellation fees.

Looking for a SMS-0nly virtual number? https://textmeprivate.com

For Hacker News only! Enter in coupon code HACKERNEWS and get 25% off all virtual numbers purchased for your first month!

This is awesome, does it support international text?

Oops, found the answer myself, yes it does. Unfortunately not the country I was interested in though :(

snowpanda, while the Call Me Private (https://callmeprivate.com) may not be available in your country, there is Text Me Private (https://textmeprivate.com) which offers virtual numbers that allow you to send and receive text messages, which are available in most countries.

I'm sure there's legit personal uses, but to me this seems like a tool for spam.

I'm guilty of answering local area code numbers in higher frequency than non-local area codes. And I imagine someone else knows about that.

yea there was a change in law that allowed spammers to use your local area code for this precise reason. Not sure if you noticed, all spam calls lately are from your area code.

Yeah it was a rather amazing (and perverse) shift. The other day a spammer called me from a number less than 10 off of mine. They must have a bank of numbers they select from based on hamming distance, as I've seen near-permutations of my number as well.

They are usually spoofing the number when they're close to yours. Hoping you'll be curious and pickup.

citation? I belive that this local number spoofing is just a meme that's caught on within the junk calling industry. The people making these calls are already in violation of a pile of laws, but they don't care. Number spoofing was always something that was available to them, but not something they knew how to use effectively until recently. I highly doubt a change in the law changed their behavior that significantly.

Hey Flux,

You are certainly not wrong about that!

By releasing this, I definitely could see the potential for abuse of a service like this. And I've incorporated a few scripts to check for specific types of abuse. It is something I'm still actively working on to prevent, but cannot fully predict every factor that might come into play.

I was working on a script to make it so that you could call the number back and block it permanently.

This is the reason I almost never answer my phone anymore unless the caller is already in my contacts.

Spammers have rendered my phone useless for receiving calls from unknown numbers.

Why is the phone-spam problem so hard to fix?

I get far more spam calls than non-spam calls. I wish my phone had a setting to ring only for callers in my address book and then give a busy signal to all other callers.

On Android (at least with Samsung Galaxy 6+) you can put your phone into do not disturb mode (settings, sounds & vibrations, do not disturb), then set up Custom Exceptions to allow calls and texts from Contacts Only.

I believe you can also do the above on an iPhone, but not 100% positive. My GF has it setup and I'll have to ask her how she did it.

As an added measure, under phone settings, you can block calls from unknown callers as well.

You should check out "Should I answer?" It's basically like a spam caller block subscription service for android.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mistergrou...

If I was a celebrity, I could see this being huge. I could only give out my virtual number even to friends and family. And then I could have my virtual number leaked but it wouldn't matter, bc I only whitelist my friends and family on that number (if I'm understanding this product correctly)

Haha, that is a great idea! It wouldn't matter if your number got leaked. You rent your numbers on a month-to-month basis, so you can easily lose the number next month and get another one. You can also blacklist callers if you wish. It is definitely a good to have throwaway number service.

Due to the spam and my move across the country I never answer numbers matching my area code and only answer calls from my contact list or from random area codes I am unfamiliar with.

If a number is like xyz--* where xyz is my area code odds are its not legit.

I've got a phone number from New Jersey, but moved across the country years ago, never changing my number. I get calls from New Jersey all the time.. I haven't lived there in over 5 years.. no business in NJ, why would they be calling me?

Call Me Private (https://callmeprivate.com) was intended for the purposes of actually receiving calls that I want to receive because I am the one giving out that virtual number. If someone is calling it, than I know someone else gave it out or I keep track of what website or who I gave it to.. and this way I have an idea of what and who the "leak" was.

Spammers can spoof numbers for half the price using a straight VoIP Service.

It's hard to tell from the site, but something useful for our business is the ability to have several distinct numbers for different purposes which can be routed to a single number.

Essentially, we have a "parent" company which has several different products which are all independently branded. When a customer calls a support number for one of our products, we want to have that call routed to one of our cell phones or office phones and then be able to tell what product that call was about so we can greet the customer properly. I know that there are existing solutions out there for this already, though.

You can verify as many numbers as you want, purchase as many toll-free numbers as you want, and redirect them to ANY verified number on your phone list.

You can have 10 toll-free numbers all going to one number, or you can have 10 toll-free numbers going to 10 different numbers. Completely up to you.

The ability to record your calls is there too, so you could know what your employees are saying, and go into your logs to check out who is calling who, and listen to the conversation.

It is a work in progress to tell exactly which virtual number is calling you, which at the moment, is distinguished from the logs.

@mattbgates: when someone calls me, what phone number do I see via caller id? Theirs? Mine? Constant that your code chooses? Or random from your outgoing pool? I ask because I only answer if a known number is calling.

They will be calling your virtual number. You will see their caller id number. You won't see your virtual number calling you.

If you ever want to see who called a specific virtual number of yours, you would go to your Dashboard and check the logs.

Cool, you got that subtle implementation detail right. Other similar services I’ve tried got it wrong.

Working on a feature that will actually text you the caller number + virtual number. In case you have multiple virtual numbers, you'll at least know who is calling.

Some of the "buttons" (not sure if they are?) on the home page under "Make your phone private today!" do not work for me.

Conferencing, Messaging, and Voicemail do nothing when clicked. Safari & OSX 10.13.1

Hey notheguyyouthink, those are just "tabbed" buttons to show you the features. Purely aesthetic and just a button for "sign up".

It's a cool product. And props for making it happen.

I would second the parent comment though in thinking you might be able to improve the user experience if everything that seems clickable actually is. It might take a little css tweaking only.

Regardless, this seems technically quite impressive.

Thank you sopooneo, I'll see what I can do to make those look not so clickable! Though actually clicking them.. should take you to the registration page. Some browsers .. it works, some it doesn't.. I've seen that!

For me only forwarding and recording option renders an actual anchor that is clickable: https://pastebin.com/fk4dtjfx

This would explain why some are clickable and some are not.

All fixed, thank you guys!

Shouldn't they do something though? 2 of the 5 buttons work, they take me to signup. 3 of the 5 do nothing, they do not take me to signup.

Am I misunderstanding you? Seems like a strange aesthetic choice, almost like the real buttons (ie Recording and Forwarding) are hidden next to the fake buttons haha.

I will look into fixing this! They all should be taking you to registration! There's nothing additional about what they do, as everything is spoken about on the FAQ or TidBits pages. Thank you for pointing it out!

I also agree with the parent, it's also a bit weird that only 'forwarding' and 'recording' takes you to the registration page :)

Agreed! :)

What kind of service is this built on? How can you/they offer unlimited numbers for 1 price? Or am I understanding some of the print incorrectly?

Hey mosselman, it was built using PHP. And it is basically a pay-for-what-you-use service, based on month-to-month cost basis.

Hi, thank you for your answer. I didn't mean the language though, I meant the underlying service provider for the phone numbers, etc. Something like Twilio?

Yes, similar service provider to Twilio.

I wonder if it's more secure than a cellular company against social engineering.

This seems like a good way to protect having your phone number hijacked for 2FA.

Does anyone know what sort of data services like Twilio collect - do they log message contents or just who's messaging who?

I think unless proven otherwise it would be reasonable to assume everything.

Safe to assume everything.

However:

When using Text Me Private (https://textmeprivate.com), there is no way for me (or staff) to see or read your text messages. I did write the ability for you to log your own text messages so YOU can see them in the log, however, this was never written so I (or staff) could view them. They are also encrypted so they can never actually be read from my end.

When using Call Me Private (https://callmeprivate.com), there is no way for me (or staff) to listen to your conversations, not even when you turn the record feature on, or for us to see who you called or who called you, nor do we have any interest in doing so. The whole platform was created to try and give everyone a chance at privacy with virtual numbers.

If you want to know, the only information recorded for business purposes on our end: virtual number | duration of the call | cost of the call

Whatever data you have between you and your friends or family or anyone else is none of my business nor the business of my company. We act as the service provider to give you a virtual number. We're not Google... we're not Facebook... we really don't care what you do in your own time, who you are talking to, who is talking to you, or what you do with your virtual numbers. No offense.. I mean, it's just really none of my business or the business of my company to know your business, other than the fact that... yay, you purchased a virtual number and you are using it.

There are a few spam measures in place to detect certain actions of numbers, and this is to try and curtail abuse of our service, for which it may flag your account.

Can you use and provision text me private via an API like Twilio? I'm building a service where fairly sensitive messages will be exchanged.

First of all, all text messages are in-the-clear (at least for the service provider). Second, this seems to be a service that is targeted to end-users and itself uses the API of one of the big "cloud telecom" providers.

If you want API access, I would suggest bandwidth.com, Plivo, or, Twilio.

Cool, this looks like a nice app-free alternative to Hushed. I like the corporate toll-free number support, definitely will be nice when I finally get my business off the ground.

UseStrict, interesting enough: I use Call Me Private (https://callmeprivate.com) and Text Me Private (https://textmeprivate.com) with Hushed.

I am no longer using my primary phone number.

I receive calls to my virtual number which forward them to my Hushed number.

I also make calls from my Hushed number to my virtual number in order to make outbound calls.

I am in talks of a partnership with them because they work very well together -- of basically going "off the grid" -- no longer having to use an actual phone number from a phone service provider.

For those who love and are advocates about their privacy, the idea is that you would buy a mobile hotspot and connect to that with an iPhone or Android so you have the Hushed app. They provide you with a phone number. Upon purchasing a virtual number from my system, you now get to keep your Hushed phone number private and use the Call Me Private virtual number service, which are more easily disposable.

Sounds crazy, but you would be virtually be untraceable to any phone service provider in regards to actually using a phone number "on the grid".

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