Phone numbers are now used in almost every part of life, including sensitive services like banking, healthcare, and personal contacts. It’s also possible to trace activity tied to a SIM and related identifiers (e.g., IMEI/IMSI), and then connect that information to accounts using OSINT tools.
I’ve looked at apps like JMP.chat and mysudo, but they seem mostly geared toward the U.S. and Canada.
What other options are there for getting a phone number? And how do you typically manage numbers specifically, when should you use them, and who should you share them with?
I’m not entirely sure what the question or ask is here, particularly as you mention this:
What is it you’re looking to avoid?
I guess it’s what you ‘do’ with these numbers. For me, I have two numbers in one phone. I have one number for friends/family and people I know as well as financials. The other is for everything else - be it the local fast food, taxi, deliveries and so on. I use iOS. If devices supported three SIMs, I’d add another to separate and have a separate number for financials. That said, I’m comfortable with having this separate from my ‘all other’ number. Ideally I’d like to separate it due to data broking and apps that harvest my data via third party (contacts). For example, if my contacts add me in their phone book and then upload their phone book to the heinous ‘TrueCaller’ type applications. I can’t prevent this, but I could ensure my banking number is entirely separate.
Like most things (and I’ll say it before @FranklyFlawless): “it depends on your threat model”
I think that it is a good practice to reduce the number of services that know your real phone number; thus, using virtual phone numbers for registration in some services might be a good idea, like to create a telegram account or google (not sure if it’s still possible having only a phone number). However, it’s potentially possible to lose access if a service will require sms verification in the future.
): “it depends on your threat model”