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6 simple ways to create a burner phone number in seconds
Keep your personal phone number private by grabbing a burner number
Your smartphone is a tech gateway to the web. It stores your credentials and adds a security layer to your Google account. As such, you probably don't want to share your mobile phone number with just anybody. Doing so could lead to your digits ending up in the hands of telemarketers or spam callers. There's a way around it: a burner number.
Answering phone calls is still a thing. You may not receive many of them, and the ones you get tend to be from bill collectors or telemarketers. But some people would rather place a call than type a message. Google's Pixel phones are great at filtering out spam calls, and the best Samsung Galaxy phones have built-in tools to help.
How to get your AT&T transfer PIN
AT&T transfer PINs let you keep your old phone number when switching. Here's how it works
If you're switching from AT&T to another carrier, you need a PIN (Personal Identification Number) to port your number. If you don't get this number transfer PIN at the right time, it could mess up your plans to switch carriers when purchasing a new phone or signing up for a different plan. We have everything you need to know right here.
How to update your phone number on your Google account
Secure your Google account with a phone number update
Google lets you link your phone number to your Google account, adding an extra layer of security through identity verification. However, if you recently changed your mobile carrier or relocated to a different country, you may need to update the phone number associated with your profile. This article shows you how to do this. The process is similar whether you own a Google Pixel 7, another Android device, an iPhone, or a computer.
WhatsApp is working to give you more control over who can see your phone number
WhatsApp is beta testing a new feature to hide phone numbers in communities
Joining a WhatsApp community comes with a lot of benefits, like the ability to chat with workmates or like-minded people. However, once you join a community, your phone number is put out for everyone to see, even if all you do is react to a message. It has made users feel like there should be some kind of privacy option — luckily, WhatsApp seems to be providing one.
How to change a Google Voice number
Whether you've moved or want a custom number, Google makes this process quick and easy
People are used to making calls from their smartphones, but making a call from another device, such as a computer, seems like a foreign concept. Some services make this possible, and Google Voice is one of the best. Google Voice gives you one unified phone number to forward all your calls. This service allows you to make and take calls on any device, including all Android and iOS devices through a dedicated app, and on the web using one of our favorite Chromebooks.
Google has silently rolled out a big change for its Duo video calling service, which now allows you to place and receive those calls from the web without needing to link Duo with a phone number. We don't know precisely when this change occurred, but in our own testing, the feature is already live, though it is incomplete: It doesn't appear to work with G Suite accounts, and while you can make calls just fine, it's a little awkward for others to call you.
Back in May, Google rolled out a new product consultation service to help folks in their smart home deliberations — and maybe point them at a few Google/Nest products. While you could arrange for an in-home appointment in parts of southern California, most of us had to make do with the toll-free hotline. There was just one catch: Google had the wrong number for that hotline listed on product pages for months.
Late last year, Google Fi ran a promotion offering new subscribers a free month of service if they ported in a number from another carrier and brought their own phone. The company is back at it, as the offer is available again for a limited time.
A few weeks ago, the Google Duo team rolled out the option to place a video call through Assistant. All you had to say was "Ok Google, video call contact_name" and Duo would open up and make the call to that person. However, at the time, I thought the feature wasn't live for me. Assistant would tell me it's calling the correct person, Duo would open, but it would stay on the main screen, not placing the call. Clearly, something was amiss and I thought it was a bug that would be fixed with time. It wasn't until a few days ago that I figured out the reason it wasn't working: my contacts had their numbers either saved without a country code or with 00 as the international prefix.
Amazon introduced calling and messaging to its Echo speakers back in May then implemented the same feature inside the Alexa app so you could start a call or receive one from your phone, without having to be near your Echo. However, the feature had one main limitation: the person you were calling had to have an Echo or at least Alexa calling set up. Calls to phone numbers weren't possible, but now they are.Amazon secretly enabled the option a couple of days ago and has now officially added it to the Alexa app changelog. After setting up Alexa calling and messaging in the app's Conversations tab, you can say something like, "Call dad's phone," or, "Call dad's mobile phone number," and it will perform a call to the phone number. Your dad will see the number associated with your Amazon account or an "unknown caller" if you decide to opt out of showing your number. You can also call a specific number if you don't have the contact in your address book, by saying, "Call 123456789."The function is live for phone numbers in the US, Canada, and Mexico. It works on Echo devices (Echo, Echo Show, Echo Plus, Echo Dot, Echo Spot, but not on the Echo Tap seemingly) as well as through the Alexa app which was updated to add the function.
We've seen a few apps and services offer virtual phone numbers before - numbers that aren't tied to a specific SIM card and can be used with an account connection rather than dedicated hardware. It's especially handy for bring-your-own-device situations at work. But T-Mobile seems to be the first major American carrier to embrace the idea with its new DIGITS system. The service allows customers to use any number of, um, numbers tied to their wireless accounts, including disposable numbers that can be added and abandoned with ease.
... and a lot like Telegram. And Facebook Messenger. And plenty of other messaging apps too. But enumerating those would make for a very long title so I had to restrict it to the most popular messenger out there.
When Allo and Duo were announced at Google I/O, one of their pillar features was their requirement for a phone number to activate. And as most of you have noticed, this has been very controversial among users: some like the simplicity of the approach, others loathe its limitations: no multi-device support, no web/desktop clients, and a requirement for workarounds to install on tablets, especially WiFi-only ones.
The LG G Pad X 10.1 isn't the most notable tablet in the world. Its specs are middling at best, its styling is inoffensive, and it isn't any particular bargain. But it does have one claim to fame, at least if you have the AT&T LTE version: it's the first tablet to support NumberSync, the service that allows users to seamlessly use one number across multiple devices for phone calls and texts. Previously the service was limited to Apple devices (piggybacking off of Apple ID) and the Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch.
Attention: the following roundup contains absolutely no mention of the new release of Google Reader... because that happened in April. But it does have some great picks for new apps from March, including our top seven and a handful of honorable mentions. News readers, social tools, and root-only apps are covered, plus some diagnostic tools for tech heads. And if customization is your thing, check out the honorable mentions section for cool icons and live wallpapers.
YouTube has always been one of Google's less conventional properties, but the sudden leap from version 6.0 to 10.0 gave everybody a surprise. Even stranger is that with such a substantial jump in versions, there are virtually zero meaningful changes to the user-facing features. While there's relatively little for us to enjoy right now, a full teardown reveals that there are at least a few additions that might be worthy of a major version bump.
Apple's proprietary iMessage system lets iPhone users send text messages to other iPhone users over a data network, avoiding SMS charges and making texting free, at least within Apple's ecosystem. It's an impressive run-around of the entrenched carrier system - the same basic idea, applied to an agnostic model, has made texting alternatives like WhatsApp fantastically popular. But users found that trying to leave Apple's walled garden was much harder after setting up iMessage with their personal phone numbers.
"Burner" cellphones, pre-paid phones that are used and discarded, have become a handy way to protect your identity if you find yourself dealing with people you might not otherwise want to meet. Just lately it has become possible to get "disposable" phones without the phone, thanks to apps like Hushed, which provides a limited-use virtual number that can be easily substituted for your real one. Burner is a new competitor in the same vein, happily landing on Android after considerable success on iOS.