Burner phone vs apps providing a hidden number

[NotThePrimeMinister]

What are people's thoughts on using one of those apps that create a disposable phone number on your smartphone as opposed to using a dedicated punting phone?

Here's what I have understood so far.

I ask because having two phones can be awkward. How do you explain it if people see you with the second phone? Say at home or at work. I can leave the punting phone at work, but people can see me when I check it to see if I've had a reply. And there's no signal in the loos.

I have found a couple of thread on the apps swytch and hushed and done some research myself. If you know of other apps providing UK numbers, please do comment.

Swytch is about having multiple numbers, not about privacy. The app has no separate address book and shares contacts with your phone. It asks for your name and collects quite a lot of data. Thanks, but no thanks.

Hushed is more about privacy. You register with an email address that does not get verified, so it could be putin@russia.ru. It asks for access to your mic, file and contacts (you can deny contacts) but not to location or other stuff. Your call log texts etc are stored in the cloud but you can delete the whole account. You can log in and out from the app as you want, so if you're logged out you cannot be contacted on your number. It uses WiFi or mobile data. What sucks is that you cannot top up using credit from a burner phone, but via card, your google/apple account, or via bitcoin. Of course the first two methods tell the company who you are.

A burner phone clearly protects your privacy better, but, unless you are so rich that your OH will hire ex MI5 spooks to hack into your phone and find about this app, the risk seems reasonable to me, and certainly lower than the risk of getting caught with a burner phone and having to explain that. I'd be surprised if MI5 couldn't catch terrorists using this, but my propriority is not to be MI5- or CIA-proof! YMMV, clearly. The app could be explained saying remember when we sold the car / let our house or whatever and we didn't want to use our real number?

A bigger risk is that the app associates you to your Gmail /apple account or to your card if you pay by card. Maybe buy bitcoin with something like Revolut and use them to top up? It would be great if you could top up from a burner phone but not possible.

Oh and of course there's always the risk the app might change in the future, require more permissions, the company may get hacked or whatever.

Thoughts? Cheers!

[Anadin]

The apps are hit and miss and often don't work when you really need them. They're fine for texting but have let me down with voice, then again I've only used the free ones so maybe paid ones are more reliable. A proper phone is a better option imho. Thankfully I don't have to hide my phones and often have 3 or 4 with me in the car.

[NotThePrimeMinister]

What apps did you try?

[Anadin]

Text Me - Free Texting & Calls and another I can never remember the name of.

[JimmySW]

I use "Another Number" on an Iphone although I don't think it would be secure enough for you - it uses the phone book on the phone and charges the Apple account but it's fine for me as my other half doesn't work for MI5!

However it doesn't give my identity away to anyone I contact which is what I need it for!

Edit: I should say it doesn't use wifi, it uses the phones normal phone line so it doesn't rely on having wifi or data to work which is a big bonus when you're trying to find an apartment with no 3G!

[Doombar]

Text Me - Free Texting & Calls and another I can never remember the name of.

I tried using Text Me for a while.  Works without wi-fi and is free. 

Seemed to work OK most of the time, but let me down when I was outside a WG's apartment and couldn't find her door, so had to call her on my personal number... 

[NotThePrimeMinister]

How do you top up with TextMe?

[roger11]

Vyke is good. Try that.

[Doombar]

How do you top up with TextMe?

It will ask you if you want to top up but I never needed to.  You get 40 free credits when you join, and if you delete the app and reinstall you seem to get the same phone number back and 40 new credits.  Also if you click some advertising links you get additional free credits.   

[geordie35]

I'm in a similar situation to the OP.
I've set up 2 google accounts and have 2 profiles on my android phone, one pointing to my main account, the other to my dodgy account.
On the dodgy profile I have Hushed as well as other apps I've tried in the past eg Kik, but these are only accessible via the dodgy profile. THe dodgy profile is finger print accessible, so only I can open it.
So effectively I've 2 phones in one, with 2 different numbers.
I find Hushed ok for texting and mostly reliable for calls. But i do have a panic sometimes when waiting to receive a call / text for the door number, for example, whether this app is as reliable as a real phone.
When in non-punting mode if I received a Hushed text etc.. there are no notifications, though the LED indicator does flash and so alerting me to at some point check.
And finally, you can register WhatsApp with the temporary number, and once setup if the number expires you can still using WhatsApp. If you need to realign WhatsApp with a new number then that's possible through the app.
So at the moment I'm sticking with this setup. It's probably not 100% secure or reliable, but then what is,  but it's  working ok for now.

[heathen666]

Here's what I use, this is on a Samsung S8.

Samsung Secure folders: This creates a ring fence on your phone, any applications inside this are completely isolated from the apps on your phone. This can also be password protected, you can disable notifications and change the look of the icon.

In this ring fence on my phone I have Hushed, Whatsapp, Chrome and Facebook. You can also have a second contacts list.

I have a second number created in Hushed, this number is also used for Whatsapp. I never send any information from this number to my main number.

I only use chrome for searches of numbers, GRIS, and Outlook, but always in privacy mode.

Inside the ring fence I have created a fake email address and facebook account, the facebook app settings have been changed to lock down the privacy settings. I can post these if it would help. I only really use Facebook for phone number searches so the security settings are important so your fake FB account doesn't show up on "You also may know" recommendations by Facebook.

Words of warnings

Again, do not send information between your regular applications and the ring fenced apps, don't even save your regular number as a contact.
Secure folders allows you to transfer photos to and from your regular phone, I've not had any problems doing this.

Be really careful when linking your phone to your car via BlueTooth. Some cars manage to get around the ring fence and display your ring fenced contacts in with your regular contacts on the display screen. I know my Volvo doesn't do this, but in the SA thread there are others have had this problem.

For an extra level of security, always use a VPN when using the applications inside the ring fence.

[Malvolio]

I assume you have an other half who will spot you suddenly have a second phone - but when you upgrade your current phone, why not keep the old one lying around and use that as your punting phone?  As long as you remove the SIM after punting you should be clear of suspicion. 

[NotThePrimeMinister]

Thanks. Isn't logging out of Hushed every time better than using the ring-fence thing? I mean even if a Bluetooth were to get round the ring-fence, Hushed would practically be inactive : no call logs to see, no ability to receive calls or texts, nothing as long as you're locked out.

Regardless of whether you use the ring-fence or not, how do you guys top up credit? To me that's the weakest spot. You do need either a credit card, a Google account with a credit card, or Bitcoin, but I'm not IT and financially expert enough for that...

[heathrowpunter]

I tend to used Hushed on iOS and delete it when not on my own.
It works OK ish - voice calls can be a bit iffy but it is the best I can do.
Very very irregular punter, which helps

[Danielle_]

I use Hushed, never had any issues and like you say better than worrying about a physical phone

[Richthescouser]

It will ask you if you want to top up but I never needed to.  You get 40 free credits when you join, and if you delete the app and reinstall you seem to get the same phone number back and 40 new credits.  Also if you click some advertising links you get additional free credits.   

You also get credits when you receive a text, which helps keep it topped up as long as you get a reasonable proportion of replies to your texts.

The calls have always worked well for me too, on 4g, 3G and WiFi.

[Plan R]

"Smart"  phones want to link with everything, your wifes phone, the WG's phone, next door's flymo, the kitchen sink.
There are ways to temporarily suppress this - but if you value privacy, for heaven's sake just get a supermarket burner for a tenner.

[NotThePrimeMinister]

Vyke charges calls in 60 second intervals. So 61 seconds costs as much as 120!

I have also looked into dual sim phones. It seems there aren't only cheap crappy phones, but also dual sim versions of flagship phones like the Samsung S7 s8 etc. They are not sold in Europe so you must source them from ebay or foreign websites (see the risk there, plus no warranty).

However, I'd be terrified of the risk of fat fingerings the wrong nunber: say I have to call a girl, and click on sim 1 instead of sim 2 and end up calling her from my private number! Or call the OH from the other sim! Or someone glances at the screen and asks why I have two signal bars. With an app like hushed you don't have these risks.

[Plazar100]

I use epiece (External Link/Members Only). A bluetooth enabled second sim device not much bigger than the size of a credit card. The device is managed by an app on your phone that you can set a password to open. Hide it a folder on your phone. Put your payg punting sim in it and you’re ready to go. Only drawback is that you cant send picture messages.

[gerrybear]

I have also looked into dual sim phones. It seems there aren't only cheap crappy phones, but also dual sim versions of flagship phones like the Samsung S7 s8 etc. They are not sold in Europe so you must source them from ebay or foreign websites (see the risk there, plus no warranty).
[/quote]

There are good dual sim phones, for example the Moto series from Motorola (I don't work for Motorola). I need dual sim and my main phone is a Moto Z2. They have some cheaper ones. The G6 is a fantastic VFM phone.


However, I'd be terrified of the risk of fat fingerings the wrong nunber: say I have to call a girl, and click on sim 1 instead of sim 2 and end up calling her from my private number! Or call the OH from the other sim! Or someone glances at the screen and asks why I have two signal bars. With an app like hushed you don't have these risks.
[/quote]

If you know how to use these phones, this should not be a problem. The setting are easy to use. You can register which sim to use for each contact if you wish.

[magnetico]

Dual-SIMs phones is probably the worst of all choices IMHO

[NotThePrimeMinister]

Let me add some more colour on Hushed:

my experience is it works fairly well. I particularly like the fact that, once you log out, that's it, the app is not connected.
I have tried CloudSim but, like Swytch, it is aimed at getting multiple numbers, not at being anonymous: CloudSim asks for your mobile number to register, and does not have a log out function like Hushed. You can disable a number but if someone were to use the phone they'd still see it.

Two minor annoyances of Hushed are that it doesn't support dleivery notifications, ie the confirmation that a text you sent was received. Texts typically disappear into cyberspace if the recipient keeps their phone off for 48-72 hours, depending on the network.

And larger text messages are not combined into one, but sent as two separate texts, eg you'd get:

text 1: [...] and this is the mess
text 2: age I was talking about

PS To be clear, I haven't made many calls with hushed as I used it mostly for texts. The few calls I made were OK, but I cannot be sure it would work flawlessly if you need to make lots and lots of calls with it.