Now you can give out your phone number without giving up your privacy. | Hacker News Reader

Now you can give out your phone number without giving up your privacy.

numberproxy.com

17 pointsSVTyler15 comments

I can't find any information about it, so I ask here: Will this work world-wide, or just for specific areas? Or will it just cost more having a call routed to an other country?

And what kind of numbers will I get? Getting a US number will probably mean zero calls for me, as I'm not in the US and people will probably not call a foreign number.

Right now we only have support for US and Canadian numbers, but you can call and receive calls world wide. We have been working on support for non-US phone numbers, what country specifically would you like to see?

cost, how much will it cost. do not make me fill out a form before you tell me.

The costs are identical to Burner: $1.99 gets you a short-term temporary phone. They use the same price points and credit system.

Seconded. Is this cheaper than a SkypeIn number?

Indeed. I will not sign up just to find out.

What does this service offer over the market leader, Burner (http://burnerapp.com/)?

Is it the Bitcoin support?

NumberProxy and Burner both offer similar services. The main differences are Burner is a native iOS/Android app so your disposable number is tied to your cellphone. NumberProxy is a web based application so you can use any phone, or no phone at all. NumberProxy accepts Bitcoin. *NumberProxy has SIP support.

We feel that response so far from our users is that the two applications are unique and have some very different feature sets.

There have been a number of these services over the years. Some have disappeared.

I first used one in 2001 to stop recruiters calling me after I had found a job. I use several numbers to put into web forms as well.

http://Flextel.com offer free (i.e. disposable) numbers and a lot of other sophisticated telephony.

Do you recycle your numbers? I once got a T-Mobile prepaid phone and had drug dealers and bill collectors calling me all day.

No, we don't recycle numbers. But just because we don't recycle our numbers doesn't guarantee that you will get a "clean" number from our service or any other carrier. Numbers, like IP addresses are a finite resource and they do get reissued eventually. In any case, with NumberProxy, if you get a number that has some "history" you can just toss it and get a new one. They are designed to be ephemeral.

About "using bitcoin for complete privacy", the service will know the client phone number, no?

Many users want to know if using NumberProxy allows you to use your phone anonymously, and the answer is no. NumberProxy was created to provide user-to-user privacy, meaning that if you call or text someone your primary number is not visible to the person you are communicating with and is not easily traceable. Full details can be found in our Terms of Service and Privacy policy, but these are the basics: Once a number expires or you manually toss it, it’s not easy for us to figure out much about you or your conversations, your associated phone number is removed from our active servers. We do keep backups of our data for 24 hours and should these records be subpoenaed, we will cooperate with law enforcement. NumberProxy is great if you are trying to protect your phone number from other people. If you are trying to protect your phone number or conversations from the police or equivalent, it’s probably best to seek another solution.

I'm assuming that "our data" includes records of who communicated with who?

In other words, once "[y]our data" is deleted (after 24 hours), you have no other record of who (e.g. "a phone number") communicated with who (e.g. "another phone number")?

Cool, always wanted one of those... could be useful once you expand outside North-America

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