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Romance scams are a big market—people lost $547 million to romance scams in 2021. The easiest way to protect yourself? A second phone number for dating.
Think of it like this. Every time you have a suspicious interaction, you might feel wary about sharing your personal information even though the person you want to share it with might be harmless. Or you might end up sharing your number with a scammer who’s made you believe they’re a good catch.
A second phone number ensures you can interact with someone safely while protecting your privacy—and disconnect from them when you choose to. Let’s talk about why you need a second phone number for dating and how to get one.
You’ve probably come across internet weirdos and scammers at some point—now think about what sharing your number with either group might mean for your privacy and security.
There’s a good chance a persistent someone will continue making contact even when you ask them not to. Or you might have to deal with a scammer trying to use your phone number to find your personal information.
Sharing your phone number on a dating site is dangerous—but only when you share your primary contact details.
There are risks associated with sharing your number with someone you don’t trust yet. You can protect yourself against these risks with a second number while retaining your ability to communicate with an unknown person.
Let’s take a deeper dive.
Protecting your privacy takes proactive effort. A person can find a lot of information about you using just your phone number, such as your full name, address, social media profiles, and possibly even your work and personal email addresses.
This can lead to stalking or unwanted attention: 60% of women and 27% of men under 35 have experienced persistent contact from someone they met on a dating platform even after saying they’re not interested.
Or, this person might choose to publish your information or other content on the internet without consent in an attempt to blackmail you.
A scammer might send phishing links via SMS or messaging apps to get your information and steal money. Tech-savvy scammers use malware to mine information or ransomware to hold your data hostage and blackmail you to wire money.
Some might choose to steal your identity instead to gain access to your bank account. Or worse, they could use your personal details to commit crimes, leaving you entangled in legal issues and damaging your reputation.
Three Burnaby residents who shared their addresses and phone numbers on dating apps received videos from fraudsters saying they’d shoot them if they didn’t pay up. In fact, there have been instances of people getting murdered by someone they met on an online dating platform.
These alarming incidents underscore the critical importance of safeguarding personal information online, especially on platforms where the risk of encountering malicious individuals is high.
Now that we’ve talked about the importance of a second phone number for dating, here are three apps that offer secondary phone numbers.
Cloaked gives you control over data and interactions. You can generate unlimited phone numbers and emails (or identities) to keep the scammers and stalkers away and continue your soulmate search safely. Cloaked helps you maintain separate personas across dating platforms with dedicated phone numbers for each platform.
Cloaked lets you create a separate working, legitimate phone number for every match you’re interacting with. Calls and texts from your match are redirected to your primary number.
When you feel overwhelmed interacting with one of your matches, Cloaked lets you mute that conversation—you’re always in control of who has access to you.
Or, if you’re concerned about companies selling your data or a data breach at the company’s end, you can use AutoCloak—it replaces your personal information with anonymous Cloaked information retroactively. Cloaked changes information across multiple platforms with a single click so you don’t have to go out of your way to update each profile separately.
In addition to Cloaked identities, Cloaked also offers an advanced password manager, one-time passcodes, easy identity and password sharing, and secure storage of any personal information.
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Get a second phone number for the ultimate dating safety.
Google Voice is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) solution. The free plan is only available in the U.S. and includes one phone number. However, Google Voice is only a communication platform. It doesn’t offer compartmentalization features or unlimited phone numbers.
You can get more Google Voice numbers only once you switch to a paid Google Voice for Google Workspace subscription. This means you’ll have to pay for Google Voice as well as Google Workspace.
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TextNow is a phone service that lets you call and text from a new phone number within an app. But…you’ll need to order a SIM card from the company and you can only use a maximum of two numbers from one phone. You’ll need more SIM cards and another phone if you want more numbers.
The calls are free but ad-supported unless you want to pay $9.99 per month.
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A secondary phone number protects your privacy, but the modern dating scene calls for more advanced solutions.
Here are some best practices for protecting your identity when dating:
Sharing your phone number and email with internet strangers isn’t the safest idea. Your primary phone number might be linked to your bank account, social media handles, and social security.
A comprehensive solution like Cloaked gives you the flexibility to create unique numbers for every contact. This gives you total control over who has access to them.
If someone tries to keep calling after you’ve clearly said you’re not interested, you can immediately cut them off.
Cloaked offers masking tools like email aliases or disposable email addresses. When someone emails one of these aliases, it’s routed to your real inbox. If you don’t want to forward emails to your real email, Cloaked can act as your inbox.
You can also filter emails so that only approved messages end up in your inbox.
Sharing is important to build a real connection, but you can probably skip personal information like full name, address, and workplace until you feel more confident about the person you’re interacting with.
Verify the person’s profile before responding to their message request. Look them up on social media and reverse image search their display picture to investigate if it’s a fake or genuine profile. If you find something suspicious, it’s best to move on.
You can steer clear of undesirable elements just by following a few best practices. These precautions aren’t hard to follow—it’s just your average internet safety checklist.
Here’s a quick overview of things that can help protect your identity when using an online dating platform.
Check social media privacy settings: Like you, scammers can perform reverse image searches too. Hide public access to personal information to prevent strangers from getting their hands on it.
Learn about scamming tactics: Learn about phishing, spyware, malware, and number rerouting work. Also, learn about how you can protect yourself against these tactics. Just three things—secondary phone number and email, antivirus, and VPNs—can protect you against most scams.
Use two-factor authentication: Use 2FA to make sure a hacker needs access to more than just your phone number to get into your account. Of course, none of your details should end up with a hacker. But if that happens, 2FA reduces the probability of a hacker gaining access to your account.
Don’t send anyone money: Avoid sending money or entertaining any financial requests from strangers. Scammers will try to exploit your emotions, so build emotional fortitude before you sign up on an online dating platform.
Stick to reputed platforms: Creating profiles on random dating apps puts your privacy at risk because many of these platforms sell your data to marketers to make money. Use trustworthy online dating platforms like Tinder and Bumble.
Picture this: You’re interacting with four matches right now. You share the same secondary number with all of them. You’ve discontinued the conversation with one of them but they keep trying to get in touch. If you trash the number, you’ll have to share a new number with the other three matches.
But you wouldn’t have to worry about this as a Cloaked user. Get unlimited numbers, easily manage masking tools from Cloaked’s dashboard, and be in complete control of your privacy—sign up for Cloaked’s free trial today!
