Got a phone to sell? Don’t want to give Craigslist or eBay your real phone number? Try Burner.
The idea is simple: the app will assign you a temporary phone number for calls or texts. When someone calls the number it will be invisibly redirected to your Android phone, all behind the scenes. The person calling doesn’t know or care where it’s going as long as he or she gets ahold of you. The same goes for texts — the app fields incoming and outgoing calls and texts.
Burner uses credits to power various tiers of temporary numbers. The free tier gives you a temporary phone number for 24 hours, allowing for 5 minutes of phone calls and 15 incoming or outgoing texts. The next one up, which costs 3 credits or around $2.00, gives you 7 days, 20 talk minutes and 60 texts. The “Long Burner” gives you a number for 60 days with 75 minutes and 225 texts.
The premise has been around forever — ever seen The Wire? — but the ease at which someone can add a new phone number to his or her repertoire is what makes smartphones so compelling. I could have used this when selling my car last year, as there were times I didn’t want to give out my real phone number to strangers I’d speak to once.
Download Burner for Android. There’s also an iOS version available.
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