Stressed about how many times you’ve shared your personal phone number online in the past year alone? Most companies will state “account security” as the primary reason behind asking for your number, but most have an ulterior motive: to barrage you with marketing messages and hope that you’ll be too lazy to flag them as spam.
Beyond the annoyance of receiving promotional content you don’t want, sharing your family’s phone numbers online puts you at risk of something much more serious: identity theft, phishing, and other dangerous scams. It’s all too easy for your phone number to be exposed online, and we’re not saying this to scare you—rather, to encourage you to be more vigilant about how often you’re sharing this personal data.
But what choice do you have when you’re signing up for platforms that only give you access when you provide a real phone number that can be SMS verified? We’re discussing the simplest alternative in this guide.
The Simple Solution: Use A Temporary Non-VoIP Number
Let’s say one of the kids wants to get the new app that everyone at school is talking about, or you want to sign up for a free trial of an online shopping service that could potentially help you save money. But you’re expected to enter a phone number before you can get any further.
In this case, there’s one main requirement for the phone number you enter: it needs to be a real number connected to a SIM, which you can access personally to verify your account with an SMS code.
For that reason, you can’t just make up a phone number, as you won’t have access to the SMS code the company sends. Instead, you’ll need to use a real number that you can access—but isn’t your own.
That’s where you can use a temporary non-VoIP number from a site like https://www.smspool.net/. You can buy one of these numbers for a few dollars, then enter the number when you create your account. You’ll then be able to receive the SMS code online, enter the code, and complete the signup process.
When You Should (And Shouldn’t) Use Temporary Numbers
Temporary numbers reduce the need to use your own number online, so you can keep your family’s personal numbers private as much as possible.
They’re ideal when you’re just creating an account for a trial, or for any signup that only requires you to verify a phone number just once, during initial account creation.
Keep in mind that you’ll have access to a temporary number for just a short period, so it’s no good for logging into accounts that require the same phone number for multi-factor authentication every time.
Takeaway
Hopefully, this guide has helped you to understand that you don’t always have to use your real number when you’re creating accounts online.
Your family’s phone numbers are valuable personal data that should be treated as such. So, do everything you can to protect them, and only share them online when absolutely necessary.