Same for email - the idea would be to have a phone/email for public consumption and then a separate address and number for my inner circle of family/friends.
Phone numbers don't quite have the same dynamic, but just having the ability of throwing a given problematic number away would already solve so much.
The search space of valid numbers is very small compared to email. A throw away number is surely a number that has already been trashed by dozens of users before you. It’d be useless unless you can make everyone forget it between users.
My personal cell number is 20 years old and gets almost no spam besides a rare robo call. Any throw away number I’ve acquire has a sordid history of being used as a honeypot it seems because it’s a cesspool.
I haven't implemented this idea yet, but what stops us from just buying Twilio credits, getting a number through them and then writing a bit of glue code to their API to pull down SMS messages (for things like 2-factor codes, etc) and route them wherever we find personally convenient? Maybe Twilio is also selling our customer data paired with these numbers to data brokers, though, IDK. It's just a fleeting idea I've had.
Go wild. Gets you like 90% of the way there.
> My caveat about this is some services will silently ignore you if you try to use a virtual number. It's more useful for IRL where you don't want to throw your real number around much.
How, specifically, do other services detect this? Is it like with IP address space where it's possible to determine things like "this C block belongs to Entity X, Inc"? Are you aware of mechanisms to avoid this detection/blocking that don't require using a "real" number.
I don't actually know specifically. I assume there are two different ways:
- The service is using Verify / Authy, which is owned by Twilio so likely Twilio themselves discourage it
- Looking up the number either through Twilio or some sort of central subscriber database. All virtual numbers are described as virtual numbers.
> Are you aware of mechanisms to avoid this detection/blocking that don't require using a "real" number.
Definitely gets into ethically gray areas since that would be super useful to nefarious people. I don't actually know for sure. I know from the recent Blizzard mobile 2FA controversy that this issue expands to also prepaid phone numbers.
So I don't know of a definitive way to get around it beyond using a postpaid number.
Somewhat related, near the end of my above mentioned service, I had pivoted into trying to launch a "21st century phone service" complete with SIM cards provided by Twilio.
The issue? They were still considered virtual numbers. At the time, in Twilio's defense, I was somewhat misusing their service because their SIMs were intended for IoT purposes not actual cellphone usage. That's all to say, it's likely provider / subscriber level vs something you can individually spoof.
I was considering exactly this, or potentially getting a second mobile number via eSIM on my phone (which feels a bit more "permanent" but that might be delusion...)
Also LinkedIn will give away your contact details.
Your Bank or any service important to you may get hacked and your phone number leaked.
Not that they don't share your email to other persons working for the same company (I've had some name I never heard of from RecruitCorp email me seven years after I last talked to someone from RecruitCorp), or I could imagine they keep their contacts when moving into / out of self-employment, but that's a far cry from public.
However, even legitimate recruiters can be a problem if you get too many of them. I recently had to rotate my business number because I was getting pretty much one call a day from someone wanting to "have a chat". They're all nice, courteous and seem to know what they're doing, but the sheer quantity became a major problem especially when you're already fully booked and aren't open to new business.