Thursday, June 22, 2023 – How to give your phone a temporary ‘burner’ number – Quickly check the balance on most any gift card

Hello, and welcome…

Rick’s Daily Tech Tips Update for Thursday, June 22, 2023

Topics covered in this issue…

• How to give your phone a temporary ‘burner’ number

• How to quickly check the balance on most any gift card

• Q&A: Will Messenger notify the sender if I screenshot his message?

• Nostalgic video: When the ‘Dial Telephone’ Came to Town

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Today’s featured tech tip….

Have you ever signed up for a one-time or short-term event of some kind only to start receiving an avalanche of nuisance calls after giving them your number?

Many contests, raffles and other types of one-off events require you to provide your phone number before being allowed to participate in them.

All too often, the entire purpose of whatever you’re signing up for is to get your phone number on their list so they can call you or send you promotional texts of various sorts in the future.

Even worse, many of those companies and organizations will sell your number to other marketers (and even scammers).

I’m sure you can imagine how this usually ends up. In fact, it might have already happened to you at some point in the past.

Luckily, there’s a simple way to participate in these types of things without having to hand over your real phone number. Give them a ‘burner’ number instead.

There are apps you can install on your smartphone that will let you give out a temporary ‘burner’ number instead of your phone’s actual number.

When someone calls the burner number your phone will ring the same as if they had called your real number. But your real number remains hidden from the caller(s), and therefore stays off of their list. And the same applies for SMS text messages.

Yes, the temporary burner number will end up on their list along as well as the lists of the companies they end up selling it to, but since it’s just a temporary number it won’t really matter.

There are several ‘burner’ apps available for both iPhones and Android phones, some of which will supply you with a temporary number at no charge (at least for a trial period).

Our friends over at MakeUseOf have put together a list of five of their favorite burner apps. Any one of those apps should suffice if all you need is a short-term temporary ‘burner’ number.

Bottom line: There is no need to hand over your real phone number for a one-off or short-term event and have it end up on dozens of marketing lists as a result. Give them a burner number instead.

The latest from Rick’s Daily Tips Tech Blog…

• How to quickly check the balance on most any gift card

You might want to bookmark the handy tool mentioned in this post.

• Q&A: Will Messenger notify the sender if I screenshot his message?

This post has the answer.

• Click here to see today’s ‘Picture of the Day’.

Every morning I post a new photo that I find inspiring, intriguing, or just plain beautiful to look at. Jumpstart your day by checking it out.

Rick’s Daily Pick…

Logitech for Creators BlueSnowball iCE USB Microphone

Looking for a really good, but very affordable mic for podcasting, creating YouTube videos or performing most any other task that requires the recording of audio?

In my humble opinion, this one is pretty hard to beat for the money.

Today’s post from ‘My Daily Smile’…

Nostalgic video: When the ‘Dial Telephone’ Came to Town

Take a quick trip back in time.

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