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Comment by blakeburch | Hacker News Reader

The thought process I had is that the numbers could have logic rules to rereoute to the right individual based on the number calling.

For example, let's say the centralized service has a virtual number of 123-456-7890. If someone with the number 444-444-4444 calls it, it routes to my actual number. If someone with the number 555-555-5555 calls it, it routes to someone else's number. If anyone else calls it, it just doesn't work. If I remove the number from my account, when 444-444-4444 calls it, it not longer works.

In my mind, this is similar to having a virtual card that rejects the transaction if it doesn't match a specific merchant/category. Since phone numbers are more limited, you'd have to have shared virtual numbers, whereas virtual cards are 100% unique.

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But under this scheme, you'd have to know the originating number of the company you're handing it out to, right? I certainly don't know my dentist's outgoing number - I might know their incoming number, but I don't know about outgoing. Same for anyone else I might give my number to.

And what happens if two people with the same "burner" number give it to the same business?

Fair points on potentially not knowing the outgoing number. I'll have to chew on that problem for a bit. Difficult, but I don't think unsolvable.

Either way, the solution I proposed is a non-ideal workaround to a better system of truly unique virtual numbers. But as you mentioned, spammers are still gonna spam numbers, whether they're virtual or not.

I think in the grand scheme, I'm ok with the potential of spam as long as no single person (besides the Telecom provider) ever has record of my actual number. If the real number leaks, it would make it easier to transfer the real number, since every existing number you've given out simply redirects to the new number.

I genuinely don't think this is one of those problems that you can solve with technology. As long as America, and the world, uses a fairly short number for telephone calls - which it must - people will be able to either dial whole exchanges for effectively nickels, or they'll be able to buy or steal (or both) this information.

This feels like a problem that can only be solved with regulation, the kind with some muscle behind it. The kind that becomes an existential threat to the sort of company that allows someone to call me five times a day to sell me a home security system with a robot lady, who then redirects me to a human in a boiler room in Tashkent/Dhaka/Indianapolis/Sevastopol/Mumbai.

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