Are there any ways to avoid handing over your real phone number, besides having an extra SIM? Lots of places/services want SMS verification, but i rarely want to hand out my actual phone number.
What everyone said already works great.
More options, where you can get a sms for one off use (or longer) for a few cents, pay with Monero.
https://kycnot.me/search?q=sms&type=
jmp, smspool, juicysms, crypton, etc, etc all give you a sms endpoint to use.
Firefox Relay has phone masks. I don’t know if they actually work though. I never had a need to try them.
If it’s for a one-time sign up and you don’t need it for anything else afterwards, then try smspool.net . They’re pretty cheap. For example US numbers for Google signups are like 40 cents. They’ve worked pretty well for me too.
2nd line, you get a free number to use
Google Voice often works.
A google service doesn’t really inspire trust in privacy? I’m trying to move away from Google services as much as possible.
SMS is unencrypted, insecure, and not private to begin with. Your SIM provider can see everything you send plus track you via cell towers.
As someone who is currently de-googling my own stuff I understand but wanting google services but please don’t think it being Google is why it’s not Privacy focused.
Its simply to avoid handing out my real phone number to companies so they can use it to match data from other datasets that link it to me. If im giving them my real phone number, i might as well also just give them my real email and not an alias.
I’d rather be 1 of billions of Google users instead of 1 of thousands on another smaller service. But a prepaid burner phone that doesn’t require any sort of personal information would be the ultimate privacy and still get you SMS capability.
This. Works for many, but there are some services that recognize it’s a VoIP service and won’t allow it (I think discord was one that won’t work)
Another option is a burner phone, which are relatively cheap. You have to use them periodically or they’ll disable and recycle the number, but you can typically find them for around 25$.
