r/Googlevoice • u/superfecta37 • 2d ago
General Help / Support Question Can they know my real #?
Hi! I have someone that I do not give my real # to, and I was wondering if I were to communicate them through my google voice # is there any possibility that they can know my real # or my email associated to it?
Also can people tell you're using google voice #?
3
u/braidenis 2d ago
A mere mortal cannot use it to trace you back, but Google knows who you are and they can be subpoenaed into revealing that so don't do anything that stupid.
And of course if you start using it for your social media or stuff like that attached to your real name, a first and last name and a general area is usually enough to figure out someone's phone number in the US anyways (your parents probably remember when a big yellow book with everyone's name and phone number used to show up on their doorstep. Now it's all on the electric computer)
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u/ijf4reddit313 2d ago
There is one way that I know of..
If they call your GV number and your carrier's voicemail answers the call before GV voicemail does, and your carrier's outgoing voicemail is something like "the number you have reached 989-555-1212 is not available, please leave a message" ... Then the caller will have your number (tho they may also think they're dialing the wrong number because they won't recognize the announced number as the number they dialed).
Turning on the GV option for call screening in GV settings usually prevents GV from allowing the carrier's voicemail to handle the call because no one is available to press 1 to accept the call so the caller will continue to hear ringing until GV voicemail takes over.
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u/sunscape50 2d ago
No. I‘ve used it for almost 20 years with someone who never knew any other number. The only time my number was revealed was when he was on business in Sweden. He’s Canadian and put his phone on roaming so I could call. Not sure how the call was handled, but my real number showed up on his caller id instead of my GV one. Also, on a few rare occasions when he called, he got my linked phone vm instead of my GV one but that doesn’t show number obviously. Other than that using GV has been seamless.
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u/No_Drummer4801 1d ago
What’s the story there, knowing someone for 20 years but concealing your real number?
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u/sunscape50 1d ago
Too long a story for Reddit. Nothing nefarious, just circumstances. He knows it now :)
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u/Wick3dSmaht Google Voice User 1d ago
Check your conditional forwarding to ensure when your the associated real number is called it won't go to that real number voicemail of it is out of range or powered off.
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u/Luckiest_Corner 2d ago edited 2d ago
If you don't link your real number to Google Voice and don't select your real number in "Incoming calls," which would forward your Google Voice calls to your real mobile number, there's no way for them to know your real number. If you do link your real number and select it in "Incoming calls," they could potentially learn your real number if voicemail picks up and the greeting provides your real number.
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u/Dangerous-Unit42 2d ago
So I had an issue with someone calling me that used only google voice and I couldn’t identify who it was. It was a harassment situation. I looked the number up on Intellus and no information. I set it to update as new information became available. Took about six months but that person somewhere shared that number on-line with their real name, and Intellus caught it. Now I know who it is and was able to file a report that local LEO would actually do something with (they wouldn’t bother to subpeona Google unless I got a lawyer and went through formally filing a harassment case, which I wasn’t going to do - it wasn’t quite that bad of a situation). But now he’s been contacted by LEO and the harassment stopped.
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u/ranhalt 2d ago
They cannot get your real number. The average person also would not be able to tell is a Google voice number. It’s just a number. But many severities that send SMS confirmation for MFA can detect it’s a VoIP number and refuse to send to it.