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Other than avoiding those services as much as possible, I use a second phone number for "machine-communication"= whenever I'm not giving my phone# to a person.
I'm in the EU, I found a provider in my country that offered a prepaid sim card (pay-per-use) with no expiry date, but never use the credit on it because it's free to receive sms. I turn it on in my dual sim phone whenever I need it.
Most plans tend to require use once every six months (i.e. send an sms or something), did you read the fine print?
I'd assume in a dual-SIM the phone's IMEI is the same?
I’d assume in a dual-SIM the phone’s IMEI is the same?
Dual-sim phones usually have one IMEI per slot, so multiple IMEIs in total.
Did not see any requirement of the sort in the fine print, but even if there were, it's fine as long as you pick the right provider. If I had to make the occasional call it'd be still worth it. There are also providers that will keep a sim active indefinitely as long as you "purchase" one month (as little as 5€) every 1/2 years (most importantly, they do not charge you into negative credit). So basically free to operate as well.
Honestly I do it mostly to limit spam, if I did it only for privacy reasons I'd have more than two numbers but I fear one might start getting noticed by the autorities at that point :/ sms is inherently unsafe and not private.
Every sim slot has its IMEI
Depending on your threat model, your best bet would probably be to purchase a burner phone at Walmart or something with cash. Then only use the phone for verification purposes.
I couldnt find any sim cards that didnt require a CC to activate. I brought one that came loaded with $40 and still asked for a CC to activate which sucked. My threat model is not existent I just believe think every service I sign up to needs to know who I am.
Yes. That's it. They want to know you're a person.
It prevents a lot of scammers and only a few "privacy enthusiasts" are hurt.
It sucks that privacy enthusiasts have to mix with actual criminals trying to hide.
How else would you propose they cheaply confirm that you're a person? Get a picture of your ID card? That's more invasive and unnecessary.
There are more modern methods that will identify you without a phone number. In the near future you will not need to enter a 6 digit code. Your phone will be able to be identified by its sim card and location (even if you have GPS off). Do you like that more or less than giving your phone number and receiving a text?
My issue isnt them texting my number and seeing if im a human. I dont like that they store my phone number and email because if I use my phone number and a random email on 1 site and my phone number and a random email on another site I can be tracked via my phone number in the dataset that these sites sell.
Yup. Exactly this. Telephony is reasonably good (but not great) as a way to filter out the minority of high-risk users. You can learn a lot about a phone number through well-known resources. VeriSign's business is booming for a reason.
There's a list of credit card test numbers that you can try to activate the account with.
Have you tried prepaid sim cards?
Not sure about SIM cards but you can still use cash to buy prepaid phones along with an amount of minutes/text to activate. Like the kind of prepaid phones that you you see the vendors sell x minutes/text/data. e.g. I've never been asked for a credit card to buy a Tracfone. Some places like Best Buy will ask you for other information to sell it but none of it needs to be real (ironically Best Buy asks for a phone number to buy a prepaid phone, LOL). You do need to set up a Tracfone account online to actually activate a phone + plan, not sure about the other prepaid vendors.
I've been using Jmp. You don't get a sim though (at least for calls and text, you can for data). It goes through Jabber. Their app can integrate with the dialer for calls. Never gave any personal info. Only paid with BTC / XMR.
SMS is not private. JMP is upfront about it: https://jmp.chat/privacy. Still didn't have to give any personal info so better than the alternative for a basic privacy enhancement threat model.
You can get a Google Voice number for free (using a burner Google account if you're concerned about privacy).
A lot of those verify your number systems detect and block VoIP numbers.
That's true. Still better than nothing though, it's worked for most of the things I've signed up for.
Sorry, Google Voice isn't supported in your country yet
Is this another USA-only Google service?
Looks like they support a limited number of countries.
Well I'm in the UK and I got that error message
This was brought up before and someone posted a rather extensive list of online services.