As we all know, it is globally acclaimed as one of the most popular social media platforms, which has acquired a lot of other social media platforms in recent years, Facebook. Facebook was developed by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes in 2004 and became the largest social network in a short period. Let’s know about fake phone number for facebook.
But after enjoying so much success, a decline was witnessed in Facebook’s popularity in early 2016. The exodus of Meta’s Facebook as per 2021 reports was about 500,000. The reasons behind this were data breaching, identification theft, spamming, and phishing. According to reports in August 2019, data of almost 533 million users on Facebook in 106 countries was released to a public database. That leaked data included all relevant personal and sensitive information. One such example was the Cambridge Analytica scandal during the 2016 United States election.
Such security concerns have forced masses to either delete their accounts or use fake numbers for Facebook verification.
Another major reason behind using fake numbers for account registration is that Facebook allows only one account per mobile number. So, for the creation of business accounts, informative or edutainment pages, community pages, or any other kind of account on Facebook, it becomes difficult for users to keep them separate from their accounts.
Thus, fake phone numbers play a key role here by allowing users not to divulge their personal contact information during the registration process. There are various alternatives available for the same, such as using a burner phone, burner phone number apps, e-sim, virtual phone number, virtual sim, or SMS verification sites. These apps and services provide substitute phone numbers for the users without the need to possess a physical sim card on which the person can receive OTPs or notifications regarding the registration and later on can be discarded once the job is done.
A lot of web and internet applications have been developed for this purpose, such as Burner, Hushed, CoverMe, Line2, SideLine, and much more. These services are provided for free or paid depending upon their features.
Some of the few Apps for fake phone numbers –
- Numero eSIM. – A 3.5-rated app with almost 5M+ downloads on the Playstore is top of this list. It offers the 2nd phone number for more than 80 countries and 400 cities around the world. It also provides international mobile data, Wi-Fi calling, free-roaming, and hide number features on a subscription-based model. By collecting coins from Free Coins Centre in the app, one can even use some of the services for free.
- Hushed – This app provides its users with a free 3-day trial. After that, users can opt for flexible prepaid plans or Pay As You Go plans. The important aspect of this app is that it comes with integrated Slack and Dropbox. The problem with this is that it cannot work with SMS short code services or verification text.
- Doosra – This app works wonders in the case of Multi-User Login, accessing messaging apps, and Smart Call Filters. It allows you to access your same account from five different devices. WhatsApp, Facebook, and Telegram are supported by this application. An additional reason to go for this app is the privacy provided. It does not share data with third parties or collect any kind of personal data.
- DoNotPay – This is a web application that allows its users to sign up for a versatile range of social media platforms. Not only social media platforms but also offer virtual credit card numbers for a free trial. Another great feature of this service is that it even takes away the heck of handling or managing your social media accounts, such as if one wants to report cyberbullying or protect data from copyright infringement on Facebook. Thus, this proves to be an excellent tool for managing business accounts.
There are various drawbacks to using fake phone numbers as they can result in hampering Facebook’s privacy policy or can be used by fraudsters to harm people online. These are also against cyber etiquette. Fake identities or anonymity are part of cybercrime that comes under the Information Technology Act and one could be charged if found guilty. Anonymous accounts can maltreat, defame or threaten other genuine users, which could, in turn, distort the platform’s image.
The outcome of using fake numbers also leads to an increase in fraudulent accounts, duplicate accounts, or misclassified accounts. According to official Facebook data, approximately 4.3 percent out of the total Monthly Active Users are undesirable accounts. Such accounts violate the terms and conditions of Facebook Community Standards. Fake numbers, even if used for fair purposes, are not helpful in the long term in the case of forgotten passwords or lost accounts. It could become problematic for the user to log into the account once the account is removed from the device.
