In a recent run-through around the interwebs, I found that scammers or con artists are using the freely available temporary phone numbers to communicate with their victims. Because I saw an open conversation from some people getting scammed. Since there are many numbers of sites offering temporary numbers freely on the internet, scammers have no risk related to using them. And as the sites offer temporary phone numbers from some countries, they can reach many numbers of people. We will provide some precautions you should take when dealing with strangers online.
The sites that offer temporary numbers offer few free temporary phone numbers to receive messages for everyone to use. Users generally use these phone number to create phone verified accounts for social networks, services, apps and grow their social media presence. As social networks trust phone verified accounts a lot more than a non-verified one, the new numbers use up allotted accounts in sites like Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Users can also buy temporary numbers for your personal use for very little. They can be utilised with no personal information linked to them. As you can buy numbers from different countries, you never know where the real person behind the number is.
Generally, people think phone numbers are more secure than making trades online as you think you have some real info about the seller. But the VoIP market is growing fast, and there are many many services, apps that offer these services. Which makes relating a phone number to a genuine individual is getting complicated.
The thing we advise doing if you want to be sure not to fall for someone using a temporary VoIP number is to reverse search the phone number. This service from Whitepages helps you reverse search phone numbers and also check if they were reported as spam. Although I think the service is only able to show if the numbers are from VoIP if you check US phone numbers. You can probably find local phone reverse search websites for the country you’re in.
If you are in a country like UK or Australia, the telecom companies give away SIM cards for free. These can be gathered in bulk and sold to be used in online sites providing temporary numbers. If you are from a country where telecoms allow this, you have to be careful where the calls and texts are coming from.
As always be cautious while dealing with strangers online. And just because they are communicating with a phone number doesn’t mean they actually physically own it. And if by any chance you or anyone you know has been scammed online, be sure to report it to Whitepages
