New 'Burner' app lets iPhone users create temporary, disposable phone numbers - Page 2

What a curious point of view for someone with a screen name like "nunyabinez"...

Seems like this would be right up your alley!

 

And I kinda think that punishing users with legitimate reasons isn't going to do anything to cut down on drug-dealing...

or those horrific "one night stands" (Don'tcha just hate it when those happen???).

Good points.

A lot of telemarketing comes from the phone number linked to your credit card (i.e., the credit card company, businesses you buy from, and their affiliates).

It can still be traced back to you. Just like the IP address your computer leased yesterday can.

We got a couple blocks of 310 numbers no problem-- 100 DIDs each. It gets harder to obtain if you are trying to re-sell, but you can actually look up NXX assignments somewhere-- there is plenty of space. But, just a DID costs us about $0.20 per month without any time, so I would be very curious how someone can re-sell the service at an attractive price.

Cool service. Good idea. Just wish they could integrate with iMessage...

Actually, there is a decent supply of numbers for something like this to last a while.

The key is that they are using numbers from lightly used area codes (e.g., rural Iowa). It's the heavily populated places that are running out of numbers and requiring new area codes.

Note that these disposable phone services aren't new. About five years ago there were a couple that were free (I suppose their plan was to make money selling ads, etc.); one was Numbr (later known as iNumbr).

Today, pretty much all of them are paid services. The 'Burner' app's rates are quite competitive.

Well the reason it's such a hassle to block and number and it costs so much is because it's useful and many many people want to do it.   Not like the telecoms are going to slay one of their cash cows just to be helpful to their customers.
 

The fact that it costs money will scare away most causal trolls and pranksters.

Numbr used to be the free go-to choice for this kind of service. Temporary numbers for the exact time frame that you needed, that forwarded to your existing number.

Numbr went paid a long time ago, but they seem to have removed the emphasis on "temporary" numbers and are now targeting businesses etc. instead of the Craigslist crowd.

There are a few other services that do what Burner does as well. Google is your friend.

There is a somewhat well-known technique of people who want to stay under the radar: coordinated pre-paid SIM cards on the dumbest phones available. You buy a set of prepaid SIM cards for a group of people that want to communicate with each other 'in private', program the SIM cards such that all have each others number on them under a recognisable name. And then you create a new set of SIM cards for the next day and so on. Each group member thus gets a box of SIM cards with instructions to put in a new one every day. Because all SIM cards are preprogrammed with the other member's numbers, they can call each other easily. So, no phone number is used for more than one day but because the cards are preprogrammed, nobody has to remember or communicate the new numbers.

 

Of course, the person doing the programming knows every number, so you have to trust that one.

 

(I think I read about this method in New Yorker but I am 100% sure it was there.)

 

Yes, there may be other companies that supply a similar service but, no, Google is not your friend.

If once the number has been used and no one can ever use that number anymore, then we are going to have to go to a 20 digit number pretty soon.  10 digits is enough.

 

Hexidecimal phone numbers!

 

"4A2-63F-9BCF"

 

"We're sorry, you must first dial an 'A', '6', 'C', or '9' and then the number of your…"

 

*hang up*

Finally an App Store Supported app for stalking, I was growing tired of getting them off of Cydia.

 

I don't see anything that says you can make OUTGOING calls with this Burner app.  If that was true, then I'd be a bit worried about the issues you mention, but because there is actually a cost to creating every one of these numbers, telemarketers and spammers probably aren't going to use something like this very much.  Also, if not for the temporary-email sites I'd never sign up for anything online. Ever.  So I'm very thankful for them; mailinator rocks!

 

Can anyone confirm or anti-confirm that it's possible to make "disguised" outgoing calls?

 

Maybe, but who the hell wants to have EVEN MORE of their lives attached to anything related to google?  Sure, you can effectively block others from contacting you, but you're also giving google another Borg tube into your body.  ugh.

I think it says a lot about someone when they can only see the negative uses for something new.

 

Show's we're depressed, is what it does. 

AND a new phone number.  You can only use one google number with one actual phone number unfortunately. I've tried!

How is a one night stand nefarious?  It takes two to tango.  

What a repressed view of the world.  

It would be a fairly limited tool if it didn't.

I really like this app idea. People automatically assume nefarious or lecherous purposes, but even when you've just met someone in a legitimate setting, you don't really know them yet. Whether it''s a date, a business deal, a co-worker, or whatever, it would be a nice bit of peace of mind to be able to use a number that you could just turn off if they turn out to be stalker-ish.

Free service to do this: http://www.ringshuffle.com/

 

You can probably do this from a browser on your phone, but from your desktop browser, you can do this for any phone, not just smartphones.

 

As far as I know, it allows you to receive calls at the temporary number, but it won't mask outgoing calls.

 

I was greeted on that site by a giant picture of a woman cringing. That's the last time I'll ever consider this site at any time for any purpose.