this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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Hello all, recently wanted to signup for temporary permanent legit emailmid in gmail. It was asking me Phone number in process, i tried to use multiple numbers from regular online resources ( more than 30) but nothing worked. I don't want to give my personal phone number in real life to someone's unless Its I want to.

How do I sign up services where phone number is required ? Is there throw away phone number I can get ? Is there way to skip it all together ( not on Gmail for sure ) Your help be appreciated.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

You could always get a PAYG SIM as a secondary number.

This is what I do. It costs me 50 cents every few months to keep alive. I only loaded it with $5 of credit, so I can ditch the SIM and get a new one at any time. The provider I went with didn't ask for any personal details and only wanted payment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What provider? And where did you buy the SIM?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

My country is probably different to yours. But I just visited their store. You can order them online from their stores too.

PAYG is a little confusing these days because every network provider is advertising it as if it's a pre-paid monthly plan. Ie. Top up $10 every month to get x bundle. But they're just the same as back in the day; they just massively emphasize the deals you can get when you top up every month because they want as much money as possible.

If you read their terms and conditions, they state that the regular price for a text, a call, a MB of data is y when you haven't qualified for a bundle. Don't get me wrong, the out of bundle prices are shockingly expensive but if like me, you want it to mainly receive and very rarely send it's not that bad at all.

I use my PAYG SIM as a secondary SIM. It would be too expensive to use as my main SIM. For the same allowance, the best PAYG bundle I could find was twice the price as my regular monthly contract.