When signing up for service with carrier with a fresh mobile number, how can one best protect it from falling down the data collection gamut hole?
My main question is, does giving said new number to someone, like a spouse or family member who isn’t privacy conscious a problem? Like, if they have their contact list spread over some services and social media?
My secondary question is how to keep the new number contained as much as possible?
I’m kinda in the same boat, when I change jobs I’m getting a new personal number.
personally I’m going to use a JMP chat number for most contacts except for immediate family and not use my cell for anything if possible
You cannot stop a contact from saving your number and having it be automatically synced with the services they use (Facebook, etc).
Your best bet is multiple phone numbers for work, family, casual friends, shopping, etc to reduce consolidated tracking on one phone number profile.
I feel like this kind of ruins the whole point of having a phone. I would suggest to keep a range of compartmentalized identities.
Old (tracked) phone number for public and hidden nominal identities:
There’s public version of you that avoids being different and has the same phone you’ve had for years. You use the same old emails and blend in and just use services as needed. If you live in the US, it’s likely every address you’ve ever lived at will be posted somewhere on the darknet or data vendor.
There’s then a slightly more private version of yourself that is tied to the same public phone number, gov ids, SSN, health records, and private family chats. Aim for more pseudo anonymity but just anticipate that all this info may not be sacred depending on the laws and where you live.
Burners for any anon identities baby:
Finally there is any number of anonymous identities that will reflect versions of yourself that need to remain separate from your main identity for your safety. (Journalism, support groups, advocacy, civil disobedience, etc…). Anything that may put your meatspace self in danger or you simply don’t want people to know, spread those across burner phones and different emails, addresses, privacy cards, etc… as drawn out by the PG team here.
Having both a normal lifestyle dictated by what culture and state-mandated norms you live in while maintaining those other aspects of yourself you don’t want conflated or connected should only improve you blending in. I’ve heard it said a lot that you don’t want your old accounts to just fade into the ether. That makes you stand out. So just be intentional in how you split those aspects of yourself in your security model.
In the end it’s up to you how you lay that out. We can only provide some ideas based on our own needs.
Yeah, I was thinking signal for all contacts. Nobody calls me anyways. 
For the very few that are important is a different story…
I would like to be able to find a cheap, voice only number that is anonymous to give a couple of family members where they can get a hold of me reliably. I was hoping for another mobile carrier for a number on an eSim only rather than voip.
I just don’t have a ton of money to pay for two complete phone plans.
Are there any carriers that offer a cheap non data phone only service that is anonymous? That would be a number for my important contacts to reliably contact me in an emergency and since it would be anonymous I would not care if it is in their contact list.
Check out US Mobile. You can customize to text or voice only. Highly recommend.
Actually, I just had an idea.
I have a business number I could use.
Any harm having it as a second sim on a pixel with Graphene os?
Any cross connections that can happen?
My only real threat model is nosey data collection services that sell my data.
I really wish Signal hadn’t removed SMS functionality from their app. That was the main benefit for Signal. I could get friends and family and even past coworkers to use Signal without any drawbacks for them personally.
I am currently using signal and text people. I had to create a group chat to do that though.
Oh shoot news to me, I’m gonna try it out
The only problem I can see is you would probably need a different group for each person unless you don’t mind everyone seeing everything that is part of a single group.
I only have one person I use it with that I text frequently and it is just us. I didn’t want to use SMS anymore do to it being insecure and plain text.
I am still learning signal, so take it for what it is worth.
If you are in the US, and in one of the original area codes, you are probably going to get a recycled number.
You can try to get a number in a newer area code, which ought to have a lower chance of being recycled.
Try not to give it out, especially to government offices like voter registrations if you can get away without it. Ugh, the texts from the political parties.