Those who live an active life online notice that sites of various topics and purposes often request a phone number for registration, newsletters, order confirmation, etc. But what to do if there is no mobile at hand, there are problems with a connection, do you want to create a second account or just don’t want the site to bother you with periodic SMS mailings? There is a way out - and this is a temporary phone number. About what features and benefits it has, as well as where you can get it, we will tell in this material.
What is a temporary phone and how is it useful
Temporary or virtual phone number is a service for receiving incoming SMS messages (and sometimes voice calls) to a "fake" phone number, from where this information is forwarded to real numbers of recipients. For non-commercial purposes, a considerable range of resources provide a temporary phone for free, but if you get it for doing business, you will have to pay for the service.
What are virtual numbers most often used for? Consider the most common cases:
- registration of the secondsocial media profile;
- confirmation of registration on some thematic sites;
- indicating the phone number for the promotion (so that the addressee does not bother with annoying mailings in the future);
- when registering a mailbox;
- to receive instant confirmation when ordering in online markets;
- to improve anonymity, exclude the possibility of surveillance by Internet scammers.
But be careful - the service that provides a temporary phone number for receiving SMS should not be trusted with personal data either. If you should receive a code, login or password in the message, then the message should not contain information about the sending site. Otherwise, after registration, you need to urgently change the "login-password" pair.
Along with a temporary phone for SMS, a number of services provide disposable mailboxes. By sending an email in this way, you are guaranteed to hide your IP, location and other information that can be used against you from the recipient.
This concludes the introductory part and proceed to the practical part - consider a number of reliable services where you can get a temporary phone for free.
Twilio
Quite a popular service that focuses on providing IP-telephony services. Most of its offers are paid, but to get a temporary phone for SMS, it is enough to register a trial account. This is done simply:
- On the main page of the site, click on the "Sign Up" button.
- Next you need to enterinformation about yourself, email address, create a password for your account, enter your real phone number.
- Duplicate the code that you will receive in SMS into a special window, then click on "Get you …".
- By default, the service will offer you a number that refers to the United States in a set of numbers - Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian phone numbers may simply not be in the database. It is only possible to change the program selection to another country.
- Don't forget to indicate in "Capabilities" why you need the number - to receive SMS, because not all provided contacts support this feature by default.
TextNow
The main advantage of this resource is that it allows you to get not a temporary phone number for free, but a permanent one. And also it is not only an online service, but also an application for popular smartphone platforms. Your only fee here is to watch ads.
Creating a TextNow account is easy. But, as practice shows, the service stubbornly refuses to register those living in the CIS. It's easy to "cheat" him - you need to use a proxy server with a US IP.
You can find all the messages that will be sent to the number provided by the service in the "Conversionals" tab.
Countrycode.org
A good service that provides a ten-day period of free use of a purchased temporary phone. Butat the same time, there is a limit of $ 4 - that's how much you can spend on communication at the expense of Countrycode.org.
You can create a virtual number in the following way:
- Select the country you are going to call. If the number is needed only for receiving SMS, then you can specify any country.
- At the next step, in "Get a virtual number in" you need to additionally specify the required state and its region. Action confirmation - "Instant Free Trial" button.
- Then the actual registration: enter your details, email address. Mark what goals you are pursuing when creating the number - commercial, personal.
- Don't forget to click on "I agree to the Therms &Conditions".
- The next step is to activate your account using the link that will be sent to your email inbox.
- Click on the green button if you need a temporary phone for one time.
- You can view the SMS you received in the following way: Manage Phone Numbers - Call Action - View message.
Sellaite
The service differs in that there is no need to go through a tedious registration procedure - you just click on a free number and it becomes yours. But we warn you that this method is only good for getting an instant code, confirmation. It is not worth linking any account to it - a temporary phone on Sellaite will be transferred to another user.
Receive SMS Online
And another useful service that providesvirtual numbers are absolutely free and without registration. Users appreciate it because it is easy to find a Russian or Ukrainian mobile phone number in an extensive database.
ReceiveFreeSMS
This site is loved by users due to the fact that from its database you can select the phone number of the country you need, including Russia. The user can only stop at one of them, click on it and inform the addressee. The incoming message will be displayed on the open page of the site. All numbers are online, so SMS is guaranteed to reach them without delay.
Temporary phone number is a very useful service in today's reality, when registration on the lion's share of sites requires confirmation via mobile, and online stores send codes for purchases to phone numbers. This service will also help those who are afraid of Internet scammers, who do not want to "shine" their personal data to the site administration, users who need to start a second and subsequent pages in popular social networks.
