How to Verify An Account Without Revealing Your Phone Number (+ a Shout Out for Graphene OS)

A bit of news and a recommendation for how to use online services that require a verification text...without using your phone number.

DISENGAGE is Famous! (OK, not really)

DeleteMe gave DISENGAGE: Opting Out—and Finding New Options—to Reclaim Your Life from Spammers, Scammers, Intrusive Marketers and Big Tech a shout-out today in the article "23andMe Bankruptcy & Data Privacy" in their Incognito newsletter. The article offers of great information and advice on how to protect yourself from the selling/sharing/leaking of your DNA info.

In more news, Critial Future Tech interviewed me for their podcast. You can listen or read the transcript here. We talk about how protecting your data isn't "hiding," why people with privilege should seek out alternative devices and apps, why Disengaging spans the political spectrum, and more.

Finally, the Disengage e-book is now available at Barnes & Noble! (And it still costs $0.) Reviews and shares are appreciated.

How to Verify via Text Without Revealing Your Phone Number

I've managed to get a bunch of my friends and family onto Signal for communicating, but I have a few friends overseas who use only Whatsapp to talk with their U.S.-based buddies.

I had to decide: Download the Meta app, or never talk to these friends again? I decided to go with Whatsapp.

I'm already running the privacy-oriented Graphene OS on a used Pixel, so I'm not super worried about tracking. However, Whatsapp requires new users to give a valid phone number to receive a verification text.

It used to be you could use a throwaway Google Voice number, but these days many platforms are savvy to that trick. So I went to veritel.io, which I recommend in Disengage. I chose "USA" for the country and "Whatsapp" for the app, and paid around $3.50 for a number that would last 15 minutes.

It worked perfectly for the verification, and I was able to open my account and get in touch with my friends.

Veritel.io charges more for verified numbers that are pretty much guaranteed to work, and less for numbers that may not be as reliable. However, if a number doesn't work, your payment is credited back so you can try another.

I was very impressed! I don't love spending money to open a simple social media account, but it was a much better option than sharing my phone number...which I'm sure is attached to my name and other identifying data.

As a side note, Whatsapp kept asking for access to my contacts and wouldn't let me just add the number of the person I wanted to talk to.

Then I discovered that Graphene OS has a feature called Contacts Scope, which makes apps think they have access to your contacts...while they're really only seeing the contacts you actually want them to see. I was able to select the three friends without giving Whatsapp access to the entire list.

I'm sure it's near impossible to escape Meta's tracking and data collection altogether, but I'm up for anything I can do to make it more difficult for them.