HACKER Q&A
📣 blakeburch

Can you make virtual phone numbers at scale?


I'm looking for something like Privacy.com or Ramp but for phone numbers.

I'm tired of getting spam calls and texts. I want the ability to give each business or individual a unique number with unique rules for when and how that number can be contacted. If I never want to be contacted again, I just remove the virtual number.

I'm aware of services like Twilio or Google Voice that allow me to do number forwarding... but it's pretty cumbersome to set up at scale (and I believe Google Voice is limited to 1 number).

Beyond the general privacy focus and reducing spam, it seems like this could have good use cases for public figures, people with stalkers, dealing with your ex, etc.

Does a service like this exist? If not, what are the technological complications preventing this from existing?


  👤 pavel_lishin Accepted Answer ✓
At this point, my number gets enough spammy calls that I've effectively given up on considering it any sort of "secret", tbh.

I still create one-off emails, but given the comparable amount of spam I get - 99% of it to a typo'ed email address from a decade ago - even that hardly seems worth it.

Also, if these numbers randomly rotate, I'd wager you'd still get spam calls, no? As one number gets "burned" (as much as a trivially-wardialable 10-digit number can be considered to be a secret), it'll be placed back into the pool, and you'll just get spam aimed at someone else.


👤 vitovito
There's only a fixed amount of phone numbers, but you can gate the person behind a single number by an extension, just like businesses do.

Give out your regular number, and generate a unique extension for each business or individual.

Have an IVR, bot, or service answer the number. "Hi, you've reached blakeburch, if you have an extension number, please dial it now." Valid extensions get routed to you, invalid or expired ones go to voicemail.


👤 JojoFatsani
I don’t think so. SaaS is probably off the table on cost. You could maybe do it in hardware with a bunch of old school office voip systems routing to modems or something? But that only scales to a point.