Maintaining discrete contacts

Want to make contact with people, but don't want to give out your home or cell phone number to everybody you meet?&nbsp; How about a phone number, probably within your local area code, that allows you to turn it on and off at will, block specific numbers or entire groups of people, screen calls, send and receive text messages and make calls from your cell phone (or home phone, for the latter) without revealing your number, ring multiple phones at the same time, set ring schedules so that specific phones only ring at certain times of the day or days of the week, and has voice mail that you can access from any web browser, including those on smart phones?<br />
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Well, Google Voice provides all of those features, and some few more.<br />
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The truly paranoid should not bother reading any further, since, absent appropriate measures on your part, Google not only already knows who you are, but where you live and work, and who you communicate with.<br />
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For those who aren't really worried about that, or who are willing to take some more appropriate measures to obfuscate your identity (hiding it totally is not within most people's means), using Google Voice is a good way to keep in contact with people on your terms, rather than theirs.<br />
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The first step in getting a Google Voice number is to set up a GMail account.&nbsp; If you already have one, you can use that.&nbsp; If you fall into a more &quot;cautious&quot; category, see the note at the end of this article.&nbsp; Make sure you disable, or better, never enable in the first place, the so-called &quot;Buzz&quot; service.&nbsp; Talk about a privacy invasion.<br />
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After you've created a new account, or decided to use an existing one, log into your Google mail account and go to https://www.google.com/voice.&nbsp; You'll be prompted to sign in with your Google account.&nbsp; That will take you to a page that tells you that it's &quot;coming soon.&quot;&nbsp; In that &quot;coming soon&quot; paragraph, there will be a link that takes you to another page, where you can request an invitation.&nbsp; When I signed up, it took about two weeks to get my invitation, which will be pretty obviously titled &quot;You've been invited to Google Voice.&quot;&nbsp; Click on the link in that message and you will be asked to fill out a bunch of information, almost none of which is mandatory, except for the phone number itself.<br />
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You will have the option of choosing your own number.&nbsp; If the number you want is available in the area code you've chosen (and you are not constrained to selecting a number in your own area code), you get it.&nbsp; In some area codes, you can get your name, or part of it, or an easily remembered sequence of letters or numbers, even full words.&nbsp; Mine has the word &quot;SEX&quot; in it; makes it easy for people to remember for some reason.&nbsp; If you don't care, just select the first number to come up.<br />
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After you've selected your number, you'll be required to add at least one phone that rings when receiving calls.&nbsp; I use my cell phone as the only contact.&nbsp; You'll need to be near that phone when setting it up, because Google Voice will call it, and ask you to enter a code; the code will be shown on your computer screen.&nbsp; After you successfully enter that code, that phone will be associated with your Google Voice account, and will, absent any further setup, ring when you receive a call or text message on you GV number.<br />
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The Settings menu, the link for which is in the upper right of the window, is where you'll set up such things as other phones to ring, voice mail greeting, default settings for incoming calls and text messages and groups.&nbsp; There are other things in there as well, but they aren't relevant to this discussion.<br />
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Here is the way I have mine set up.<br />
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Under Phones, I have my phone <b>unchecked</b>.&nbsp; This causes all callers to be forwarded directly to voice mail by default, unless they appear in one of the groups I've described below.<br />
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Under &quot;Voicemail and SMS&quot;, I have it set to use the System Standard greeting, alert me via text message on my cell phone when I get a voice mail, forward text messages to my email account, and to transcribe voice mails. (Voice mail transcription is interesting, but not too accurate, in my experience, at least not when it's from drunk dancers at noisy strip clubs.)&nbsp; These settings also affect all callers, unless they appear in a group with different settings.<br />
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Under &quot;Calls&quot;, I have call screening turned on, with a request for unknown callers to say their name.&nbsp; For caller id, I want to display my GV number on inbound calls and outbound text messages, rather than the caller's or mine, so I don't have to set up contacts on my phone, and so I don't reveal my number.<br />
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Under groups, I have two set up.&nbsp; <br />
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The first is for people who have either called me, or answered me when I called, at least once.&nbsp; Call screening is on for them, so I get to hear their name (if they've chosen to say it), but they aren't connected unless I explicitly decide to connect them.&nbsp; Of course, if I don't answer, they go to voice mail.<br />
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The second group is for those who have become regular contacts.&nbsp; These callers are connected directly to my phone when they call, without being screened, or go to voice mail if I don't answer.&nbsp; They also hear a different greeting that I've recorded, rather than the system standard.<br />
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You can also explicitly block the numbers of people you don't want contact with any more, and you don't have to create a contact to do it.&nbsp; Blocking the number plays a not in service message just like the one the phone company plays when they cut you off.<br />
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If you're going on vacation, or have some other period of time where you don't want any calls, just set the &quot;Do not disturb&quot; flag on, with or without a time limit, and all calls will be forwarded directly to voice mail, regardless of who's calling.&nbsp; If you're a working stiff, you can tell GV to send to voice mail during the day, and forward them to your phone at night or on weekends.<br />
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Google Voice lets you give your phone number to just about anyone, and then gives you absolute control over, which, if any, of those people are allowed to disturb you at any given time.&nbsp; It gives you the freedom to completely ignore, push to voice mail or immediately handle calls without having to do much of anything but the initial set up.<br />
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The truly paranoid have no need for any information about how to hide themselves online.&nbsp; However, if you just want to be cautious, you can follow one or more of the following woefully incomplete list of suggestions.&nbsp; There's little you can do if someone (especially Google) <i><b>really</b></i> wants to find out who you are, but using all of these might delay them somewhat.&nbsp; For those who are interested, I don't follow any of these. :)<br />
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<li>Never use your own computer.&nbsp; Or, if you must, use it only in public wi-fi areas, with software that hides your MAC address.&nbsp; Don't make a pattern of the public wi-fi sites you use; mix it up, including going to different cities.&nbsp; Don't ever access your new GMail account and any of your other accounts from the same computer.</li>
<li>Create a new Google mail account that you use for <i><b>nothing</b></i> except this purpose.&nbsp; Not surfing, not emailing your buddies, not even logging into TUSCL.</li>
<li>Do not give Google a secondary contact email address.&nbsp; This will require that you remember your password forever, as there will be no way to recover it in the event you do forget it.</li>
<li>If you are not confident of your ability to remember your password forever, use one of the anonymous mail providers, such as http://www.mailinator.com, to create a bogus email.&nbsp; Then use the randomly generated one they give you to actually provide to Google.</li>
<li>Never give your new GMail address to anyone.&nbsp; If you get mail there, mark it as spam, and Google will forever delete it automatically for you.</li>
<li>Never use your own phone.&nbsp; Instead use a &quot;burn&quot; phone (i.e. one of those phones you can pay cash for at Wal-Mart), and never use it to call anyone else.&nbsp; When you buy more minutes, use cash, and don't buy them from the same place twice.&nbsp; For added security, don't buy new minutes.&nbsp; Throw the phone away, and buy a new one every time.</li>
<li>Don't use your own phone and your burn phone in the same cell location at the same time, or even in close proximity to each other.</li>
<li>Never call your Google Voice number, or your burn phone, from your own phone, or any other phone you regularly use, such as work or that of a friend, and never give it to someone who knows who you really are.</li>
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Makes your brain hurt, doesn't it?

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