11 ms·

Perhaps this is a good reason to use Google Voice and not give anyone the underlying real phone number with cell service.

twerkable 8y ago
any reason to think google doesn't sell your data
- ohithereyou 8y ago
  No, not particularly.
- gruez 8y ago
  google monetizes your data (targeting), but doesn't sell it to others.
  - simion314 8y ago
    As we seen with the Google Plus bug that exposed user data even if Google would be a nice company even they can have a bug and expose your data, this makes me think that the best solution as a user is minimize the data that is collected about you and as a company to discard any data that you don't need and anonymize the data you have to keep and can be anonymized.
  - StreamBright 8y ago
    Maybe not intentionally but problem is that often such data can be partially or fully de-anonymized using various statistical analysis techniques.
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    #1 Reason: no one can monetize that data better than Google #2 They'd be helping their rivals with such data #3 Sharing might kill the golden goose (bad press etc) ...
    - cc439 8y ago
      Reason #1 sort of invalidates Reason #2. If Google is reasonably confident that they have an unmatchable (in the short term) advantage in interpreting and monetizing your data and can also generate additional revenue by selling it to firms that can't extract the same value from it, what incentive is stopping them? If competitors start to catch up in the areas jn which they have the clear advantage, they can simply shut off the faucet and the revenue generated by selling information jn the here and now helps fund initiatives to keep them ahead in the first place.
- sct202 8y ago
  Googlers seem to have leaky lips, so I figure if they do something shady one of them is going to go to the press.
  - rjf72 8y ago
    I think the logical outcome is rather than Google avoiding ethically dubious, but highly profitable behavior, they will simply run a tighter ship of classification, isolation, and control. Companies and governments have become pretty decent at fingering over-eager leakers. And that's before you even get into who we're talking about. Google may rival even the NSA at this point in terms of the reach and breadth of their digital surveillance and data collection/categorization capacities, at least in the Western world. They're going to learn from and work against their leaks, not give up their 'ambitions'. Consider the NSA for an example of what's possible. They were doing what Snowden outed for years. And not a peep. Actually that's not true. There were plenty of 'peeps' but they were brutally silenced. See, for instance, Thomas Drake [1]. He tried to obey the law relying on whistleblower laws and an assumption of good will from other government organizations. He got destroyed and lost everything he had, and was unable to effectively get his message out on top of it all. That's another topic though... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_A._Drake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_A._Drake
- nostrademons 8y ago
  They make much more money using it for their own products. Data is Google's core competitive advantage; you don't sell your core competitive advantage to competitors.
- rdl 8y ago
  If it's just a voicemail box it doesn't have your location data to leak, although a DID onto a voicemail box (and maybe a SIP trunk if you really want it) is better.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  There’s a big difference in risk between Google selling your forwarding numbers and any random person finding a corrupt bail bondsman.
Scoundreller 8y ago
I’ve set up a DID that leads directly to a voicemail box that emails me the recording. It’s worth the $1/month expense to have a number to hand out to people I don’t want to be available to. And, in a way, it keeps me available when I’m overseas and don’t have my usual SIM card installed. I use VoIP.ms
- techsupporter 8y ago
  What gets me are all of the places (like Venmo, et al) who pitch a fit if a user dares give them a not-a-real-mobile-number. Even if the number is SMS-capable, they complain. I wonder if the fact that services like this won't work on VoIP numbers is a reason why. Regardless of the motivation, it's annoying because I don't give out my real mobile number to hardly anyone for this--and spam call/text avoidance--reason.
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    I fear the reason is that the pools of VoIP numbers have already been exhausted as a resource for setting up’accounts. Ie: some firm is renting VoIP numbers for a month for $1, creating accounts on 100 services and then moving to the next VoIP number. Perhaps the VoIP firms support this whenever they get a block of « virgin » numbers before putting them in their regular pool of numbers for rent.
    - simple_phrases 8y ago
      This just means that phone numbers make for terrible identifiers because there's a fixed number of them and they're transient.
      - cc439 8y ago
        The transience bit is going to become a huge problem over the next decade. I've personally had 3 phone numbers since college (an out-of-state # doesn't mesh well with my career and I've moved several times) and at least one of the individuals who picked up one of my old numbers is the kind of person who has potential for serious run-ins with the law. My mother called my old # once and I guess it was auctioned to company that has a big market in prepaid "burner" phones. In the era of "Big Data" I can't even begin to imagine the sort of hilarious comedy (sarcasm) that can result from the two of us being linked together by what has become a primary source of personal identification.
untog 8y ago
Google Voice doesn't actually provide cell service, though. Whatever telco you use with Google Voice will still have realtime access to your location.
- danso 8y ago
  But if you ask a telco to give you data on a number that Google Voice administers, would the telco be able to fulfill that request? I mean, obviously they could with a little digging, but would their middlemen be able to? e.g. if my "real" email account is through Yahoo, but I tell the public about my GMail address which autoforwards to Yahoo, it wouldn't be straightforward (though it would be obviously possible) for Yahoo to deal with a request stated as "Please give me info about the email account, danspublicemailaddress@gmail.com".
zippy 8y ago
well, except for one of the largest advertising and data collecting companies on the planet, that really really wants to know where you are right now.
jedberg 8y ago
Yep, I've been doing this for years. Only my wife and a few trusted friends have the real cell phone. Everyone else and their mother gets the GVoice number. I also change the underlying number occasionally just to mix it up even more (although truth be told that's to get better wireless deals, but it has a nice bonus of added security).
- discordance 8y ago
  How do you avoid giving your mobile number to service providers on sign up (banks, paypal, uber etc)?
  - dawnerd 8y ago
    Google voice works fine for that... I do the same. It's wonderful.
    - Larrikin 8y ago
      Google voice used to work fine, but I've found increasingly a number of the more "serious" institutions like banks have been rejecting VoIP numbers like Google Voice occasionally. If I can recall correctly I also believe that many of the chat applications reject numbers that are not tied directly to a SIM as well. I have used my GV since it was still invite only and have had to give out my real number increasingly often.
      - dawnerd 8y ago
        Noticed my GV number being rejected but the main number I have in GV works. That number was ported back when you could do that (maybe you still can?) I wonder why that is. Maybe outdated databases?
  - jedberg 8y ago
    Usually it just works. When it doesn't I call them and tell them my phone doesn't work and ask for another way to verify my identity.
mlindner 8y ago
All you're doing is moving that from T-Mobile/AT&T/Verizon to Google, who will sell the information at the drop of a hat for the exact same reason. You're not guaranteeing anything at all. In fact you're probably making yourself less safe as Google is going to have less protections than a cell phone company.
- jamiequint 8y ago
  This is completely incorrect. Google/Facebook/etc actually have far better data privacy than the telecoms. Google/Facebook/etc all sell access to target you using the data they know about you. Telecoms literally sell your data. There's a big difference.
  - macintux 8y ago
    Google I’ll buy, but Facebook does sell your data. NYT has been hitting that story pretty hard.
    - jamiequint 8y ago
      Facebook does not sell your data. Facebook licensed data for very specific use cases (e.g. allowing feature phone developers to create feature phone FB apps, allowing individual apps to access data with your permission) but in both of those cases (all the NYT cases about FB data privacy in-fact) they did not get paid.
cascom 8y ago
Out of the frying pan and into the fire...
kpcyrd 8y ago
I started doing something like this (but with a different provider) and I noticed this is surprisingly difficult: Especially messaging providers identify users based on phone numbers, but also a lot of websites started requiring a phone number verification. Those virtual phone numbers are often rejected. This can cause situations in which you have different phone numbers on 2 services.
- ramraj07 8y ago
  Only service that rejected my gvoice number was Viber, I just said fuck Viber, WhatsApp is good enough

twerkable 8y ago

any reason to think google doesn't sell your data

ohithereyou 8y ago
No, not particularly.
gruez 8y ago
google monetizes your data (targeting), but doesn't sell it to others.
- simion314 8y ago
  As we seen with the Google Plus bug that exposed user data even if Google would be a nice company even they can have a bug and expose your data, this makes me think that the best solution as a user is minimize the data that is collected about you and as a company to discard any data that you don't need and anonymize the data you have to keep and can be anonymized.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  Maybe not intentionally but problem is that often such data can be partially or fully de-anonymized using various statistical analysis techniques.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  #1 Reason: no one can monetize that data better than Google #2 They'd be helping their rivals with such data #3 Sharing might kill the golden goose (bad press etc) ...
  - cc439 8y ago
    Reason #1 sort of invalidates Reason #2. If Google is reasonably confident that they have an unmatchable (in the short term) advantage in interpreting and monetizing your data and can also generate additional revenue by selling it to firms that can't extract the same value from it, what incentive is stopping them? If competitors start to catch up in the areas jn which they have the clear advantage, they can simply shut off the faucet and the revenue generated by selling information jn the here and now helps fund initiatives to keep them ahead in the first place.
sct202 8y ago
Googlers seem to have leaky lips, so I figure if they do something shady one of them is going to go to the press.
- rjf72 8y ago
  I think the logical outcome is rather than Google avoiding ethically dubious, but highly profitable behavior, they will simply run a tighter ship of classification, isolation, and control. Companies and governments have become pretty decent at fingering over-eager leakers. And that's before you even get into who we're talking about. Google may rival even the NSA at this point in terms of the reach and breadth of their digital surveillance and data collection/categorization capacities, at least in the Western world. They're going to learn from and work against their leaks, not give up their 'ambitions'. Consider the NSA for an example of what's possible. They were doing what Snowden outed for years. And not a peep. Actually that's not true. There were plenty of 'peeps' but they were brutally silenced. See, for instance, Thomas Drake [1]. He tried to obey the law relying on whistleblower laws and an assumption of good will from other government organizations. He got destroyed and lost everything he had, and was unable to effectively get his message out on top of it all. That's another topic though... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_A._Drake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_A._Drake
nostrademons 8y ago
They make much more money using it for their own products. Data is Google's core competitive advantage; you don't sell your core competitive advantage to competitors.
rdl 8y ago
If it's just a voicemail box it doesn't have your location data to leak, although a DID onto a voicemail box (and maybe a SIP trunk if you really want it) is better.
Spooky23 8y ago
There’s a big difference in risk between Google selling your forwarding numbers and any random person finding a corrupt bail bondsman.

Scoundreller 8y ago

I’ve set up a DID that leads directly to a voicemail box that emails me the recording. It’s worth the $1/month expense to have a number to hand out to people I don’t want to be available to. And, in a way, it keeps me available when I’m overseas and don’t have my usual SIM card installed. I use VoIP.ms

techsupporter 8y ago
What gets me are all of the places (like Venmo, et al) who pitch a fit if a user dares give them a not-a-real-mobile-number. Even if the number is SMS-capable, they complain. I wonder if the fact that services like this won't work on VoIP numbers is a reason why. Regardless of the motivation, it's annoying because I don't give out my real mobile number to hardly anyone for this--and spam call/text avoidance--reason.
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  I fear the reason is that the pools of VoIP numbers have already been exhausted as a resource for setting up’accounts. Ie: some firm is renting VoIP numbers for a month for $1, creating accounts on 100 services and then moving to the next VoIP number. Perhaps the VoIP firms support this whenever they get a block of « virgin » numbers before putting them in their regular pool of numbers for rent.
  - simple_phrases 8y ago
    This just means that phone numbers make for terrible identifiers because there's a fixed number of them and they're transient.
    - cc439 8y ago
      The transience bit is going to become a huge problem over the next decade. I've personally had 3 phone numbers since college (an out-of-state # doesn't mesh well with my career and I've moved several times) and at least one of the individuals who picked up one of my old numbers is the kind of person who has potential for serious run-ins with the law. My mother called my old # once and I guess it was auctioned to company that has a big market in prepaid "burner" phones. In the era of "Big Data" I can't even begin to imagine the sort of hilarious comedy (sarcasm) that can result from the two of us being linked together by what has become a primary source of personal identification.

untog 8y ago

Google Voice doesn't actually provide cell service, though. Whatever telco you use with Google Voice will still have realtime access to your location.

danso 8y ago
But if you ask a telco to give you data on a number that Google Voice administers, would the telco be able to fulfill that request? I mean, obviously they could with a little digging, but would their middlemen be able to? e.g. if my "real" email account is through Yahoo, but I tell the public about my GMail address which autoforwards to Yahoo, it wouldn't be straightforward (though it would be obviously possible) for Yahoo to deal with a request stated as "Please give me info about the email account, danspublicemailaddress@gmail.com".

zippy 8y ago

well, except for one of the largest advertising and data collecting companies on the planet, that really really wants to know where you are right now.

jedberg 8y ago

Yep, I've been doing this for years. Only my wife and a few trusted friends have the real cell phone. Everyone else and their mother gets the GVoice number. I also change the underlying number occasionally just to mix it up even more (although truth be told that's to get better wireless deals, but it has a nice bonus of added security).

discordance 8y ago
How do you avoid giving your mobile number to service providers on sign up (banks, paypal, uber etc)?
- dawnerd 8y ago
  Google voice works fine for that... I do the same. It's wonderful.
  - Larrikin 8y ago
    Google voice used to work fine, but I've found increasingly a number of the more "serious" institutions like banks have been rejecting VoIP numbers like Google Voice occasionally. If I can recall correctly I also believe that many of the chat applications reject numbers that are not tied directly to a SIM as well. I have used my GV since it was still invite only and have had to give out my real number increasingly often.
    - dawnerd 8y ago
      Noticed my GV number being rejected but the main number I have in GV works. That number was ported back when you could do that (maybe you still can?) I wonder why that is. Maybe outdated databases?
- jedberg 8y ago
  Usually it just works. When it doesn't I call them and tell them my phone doesn't work and ask for another way to verify my identity.

mlindner 8y ago

All you're doing is moving that from T-Mobile/AT&T/Verizon to Google, who will sell the information at the drop of a hat for the exact same reason. You're not guaranteeing anything at all. In fact you're probably making yourself less safe as Google is going to have less protections than a cell phone company.

jamiequint 8y ago
This is completely incorrect. Google/Facebook/etc actually have far better data privacy than the telecoms. Google/Facebook/etc all sell access to target you using the data they know about you. Telecoms literally sell your data. There's a big difference.
- macintux 8y ago
  Google I’ll buy, but Facebook does sell your data. NYT has been hitting that story pretty hard.
  - jamiequint 8y ago
    Facebook does not sell your data. Facebook licensed data for very specific use cases (e.g. allowing feature phone developers to create feature phone FB apps, allowing individual apps to access data with your permission) but in both of those cases (all the NYT cases about FB data privacy in-fact) they did not get paid.

cascom 8y ago

Out of the frying pan and into the fire...

kpcyrd 8y ago

I started doing something like this (but with a different provider) and I noticed this is surprisingly difficult: Especially messaging providers identify users based on phone numbers, but also a lot of websites started requiring a phone number verification. Those virtual phone numbers are often rejected. This can cause situations in which you have different phone numbers on 2 services.

ramraj07 8y ago
Only service that rejected my gvoice number was Viber, I just said fuck Viber, WhatsApp is good enough