It’s worth the $1/month expense to have a number to hand out to people I don’t want to be available to.
And, in a way, it keeps me available when I’m overseas and don’t have my usual SIM card installed.
I use VoIP.ms
I wonder if the fact that services like this won't work on VoIP numbers is a reason why. Regardless of the motivation, it's annoying because I don't give out my real mobile number to hardly anyone for this--and spam call/text avoidance--reason.
Ie: some firm is renting VoIP numbers for a month for $1, creating accounts on 100 services and then moving to the next VoIP number.
Perhaps the VoIP firms support this whenever they get a block of « virgin » numbers before putting them in their regular pool of numbers for rent.
If Venmo were a brick and mortar business, they could just ask you to come by a local office so they can verify your ID in person. But they don't have a local office; so the reasonable and profitable solution is to preemptively ban you.
Thanks
I use a SIP desk phone, have calls forwarded to my mobile, and also get voicemail recordings in mail.
(Going back to the original article -- I can't say if this actually protects you from such tracking. Maybe stalkers could find your actual mobile number by some other means, or for all I know customer-identifying parameters could be used without even knowing the phone number.)
No software or server running on my end. It’s all on theirs.
I originally set it up when my phone provider wanted to charge me several dollars per month for a less useful voicemail system, so I set up such a thing by telling my provider to forward unanswered calls to that other DID.