Keeping Your Home Phone Private

While prepaid cell phones are a great aid to phone privacy, they can be expensive if you do a lot of calling. You can have a home phone and still keep your privacy. It's just not as easy. The phone service that offers nearly the same privacy advantages of prepaid cell phones, but at much lower cost, is VoIP. For those who haven’t used VoIP, it’s not like the PC-to-PC calling where the person you’re calling has to have the same software. You do need broadband internet service. You connect your regular phone to a router or phone adaptor, which then connects to your PC. If you can hook up a PC, you should be able to set up VoIP. Voice quality is about the same as a landline phone.Vonage is the biggest and most widely available VoIP provider, and it’s the one I’ve personally used. You can get a phone number in your local area code or in another area code altogether or, for an extra $10.00 a month or so, both. With Vonage, the account name and credit card name did not have to match. I recommend using a prepaid credit card like WebSecret. Vonage has a $39.99 cancellation fee. If you do decide to cancel, before you call them, spend all the money in your prepaid credit card account. Of course, don’t do this if you think that Vonage deserves $39.99 for closing your account.You must use Vonage’s equipment, so you will need a valid account address to receive that. Change it afterwards if you want. Let’s review the setup: you have “ghost” or false addresses for your account and credit card, your account and CC names are different, and your credit card is prepaid. The phone number will not be listed. (I asked Vonage about this, and I periodically did reverse look-ups to confirm it.) And if you don’t even need the phone number to be in your local area code… Well, now you’re really cooking with gas.If you decide to check out Lingo, Packet8, or another provider be sure you can get the features you need for privacy. Also, there is one more important thing. You will be required to acknowledge that the address you give is your physical address for 911 service. Since the address you will give isn’t, you cannot use your VoIP phone for 911. This came about thanks to the idiots who tried to use their VoIP phone for 911 even though their provider told them they couldn’t.Even though VoIP phones are easier to establish anonymously, you can have a landline phone and still keep your privacy. I’m not going to talk about keeping your account private–just the listing. Unless you have law enforcement or a highly paid private investigator after you, your account is reasonably private as long as you use a ghost address for the billing address. The listing is what gets associated with your name in public records.It’s actually okay to have a regular listing if you only list your initial and last name with no address. With no first name or address, the phone number won’t b associated with your name. Getting your phone from the cable company also stymies some online searches. If they search by number, it usually just shows that it’s owned by the company.Don’t bother with an unlisted number. Those are immediately sold to marketers by telephone company employees. Save your money.We can do a little better than that though. The basic principle to remember is that it is a normal thing for a phone to be listed in someone other than the account holder’s name. It’s no big deal at all. Parents do it for children, wives for husbands, etc. Think of whom it would seem reasonable for you to order phone service for and ask for the listing to be in that name. A girlfriend or boyfriend makes the different last name seem more reasonable, but many families have children with different last names. List the name by initial and last name with no address. Have the bill sent to a different address than the service address. If you haven’t done any of this before, I can assure you that none of it is extremely unusual or outlandish. Just order your service the way that you want it with confidence and courteously insist that everything be done the way you prefer.Some people think it is hilarious to list phones in the names of characters like Mickey Mouse, Luke Skywalker, etc. I recommend against such “clever” tactics unless you’re acquainted with the clerk and know that he or she will put through your request. Some employees identify with the organization they work for. What if you get the clerk who thinks you’re violating the sanctity of the telephone listings by ordering your phone listing in the name of Frodo Baggins? Is making a point, being funny, or getting the service you want your goal? Since the goal is privacy, the first two are irrelevant and unimportant as far as I’m concerned. Who is going to appreciate your point or laugh at your joke?Though not as anonymous as a prepaid cell phone or VoIp service, a regular landline phone can still be private. If you have the bill sent to your mailing address and list the phone in another name, your phone service will be as private as most people need it to be.

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