Phone communication and keeping it off the books

September 2, 2009 9:55 AM

I and another person need to communicate with each other via phone and text in a manner that does not appear on our regular phone bills, how do we accomplish this?

We are on opposite coasts in the US. One of us is on Tmobile, the other is on AT&T. What methods can we use to call and text each other so that our respective phone numbers do not show up on the monthly phone bill? Do we need to move to a different service? Do we need to get new phones on an account different from our current ones? Has anyone used pay as you go phones? How do they work, are they billed to your credit card or do you buy calling minutes? If you buy calling minutes via the cards available in stores and use your current phone with them, will the numbers show up on your bill?

We're clueless as to your options, so any help or tips would be appreciated.

posted by anonymous to technology (16 comments total)

If you both spend most of your time in wi-fi, install skype on both your phones (easy on an iphone and possible on other handsets) and you can effectively call and text each other that way. Alas the carriers block skype from working over the air, only over wi-fi.
posted by momentofmagnus at 9:57 AM on September 2

Seconding skype, sneaky person.

If you don't mind doing your dark deeds on your computer, skype calls are free between skype users and it's great for chat. I haven't yet gotten skype to work on my blackberry (didn't work to my satisfaction on my classic bb, haven't tried on the Curve yet), so no useful comments to make there.
posted by Billegible at 10:01 AM on September 2

With regards to prepaid: You buy minutes on cards, and you need a separate phone for them, so they won't be connected to your current billing at all. They're exactly what you want, assuming you're willing to use a separate phone.
posted by Tomorrowful at 10:01 AM on September 2 [2 favorites]

Get Google mobile accounts.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 10:04 AM on September 2 [1 favorite]

Yes, skype and email. Cell phone bills exist to prove you made and received the calls they billed you for. So there's no way you're going to find a system where you're both using your cell plan, and not having a record made of it. Instead, get a smartphone, and a separate email account. Use the email account instead of text messaging. Use skype to make calls when you're in a wifi zone.

Your only other option is to get a separate pay-as-you-go phone that you use for these calls.
posted by kingjoeshmoe at 10:05 AM on September 2

You can also use Gizmo, an open source system that has capability for mobile use/forwarding as well.
posted by bluedaisy at 10:08 AM on September 2

I am not a cell phone person so this might not work, but maybe the AT&T person could buy one of these and the t-mobile person could buy one of these (on different accounts probably). Then each party could buy one of these.
posted by syntheticfaith at 10:44 AM on September 2

I have a prepaid Virgin Mobile phone on their per minute plan. You can buy the phones and the minutes (sold in the form of a gift card) in cash at any discount department store. There is no accounting of the calls available via paper or web, the only accessible record (sans a court order, I'd imagine) will be the call log on the individual phones. Prepaid gets expensive if you are using them a lot, however.
posted by jamaro at 10:59 AM on September 2 [1 favorite]

I'm not exactly sure how google voice works, but couldn't you use it? If you call your google voice number from your cellphone and do the thing that lets you then call a number FROM that google voice number, it seems like that would bypass the cell phone company's recording of the phone number -- the call would still appear of course, but to the google voice number instead of Other Person's number.

And on my phone bill it doesn't record who my texts were sent to, just how many, but if yours does you can do email-to-text or something like that.
posted by brainmouse at 11:11 AM on September 2

So that you know, I yelled at Rogers just a few weeks ago because they don't provide me with the phone numbers of the text messages I sent/received, but they just kept saying that they don't track that and can't give it to me. Probably the same for you?
posted by Lemurrhea at 11:17 AM on September 2

I like the Skype idea; provided you're around internet connections frequently, Skype-to-Skype calls are free. But if you use Skype to call a real phone it costs, although the rates are very good, even international. If you end up doing the latter you will have Skye listed on your credit card statement, if you pay via Paypal, for example. This would not show anyone who you're calling, of course, but it would show them that you had purchased Skype credit in order to make calls. Oh, and if someone with a Skype account calls your physical phone the number will show up as something like 99999; that may be just for texts with calls coming from "Private Number" or something like that. Not traceable to anyone Unless they have a Skype phone number (a per month cost).

Other than that, pre-paid is your best choice. It can get expensive but you can do everything with cash and it'll be very difficult to trace. The physical phone is still a risk, however. If you are concerned with someone seeing your call/text records on your phone bill then you may be concerned with them finding your second phone. In that case you should religiously delete any texts from the phone and clear the log after every call, and have the other party's number memorized, never in contacts.
posted by 6550 at 11:48 AM on September 2

The physical phone is still a risk, however.

Not sure how it works in the US, but here in the UK you can just buy a pay-as-you-go sim card and insert it into your current handset (which must be on the same network, or unlocked). That way you would only have to hide the sim card rather than a second phone. Although I'm not sure whether texts, call details, etc made with the PAYG sim card would be saved to the sim card or the handset.
posted by hibbersk at 1:14 PM on September 2

Pay-as-you-go SIM cards aren't as common here, hibbersk, although with some carriers & phones that can work. If I were attempting to stay in communication with my mistress while she was on the opposite coast (just picking one hypothetical situation out of the surely multiple reasons why you might want to hide your communique's...), I'd go with Skype, or a prepaid cheapo cellphone, paid for entirely with cash.
posted by IAmBroom at 1:41 PM on September 2

Another option would be to get a calling card; you can pick one up at any supermarket. Then you'd dial the number on the calling card from your existing phone, and through their system call your friend. Calling cards tend to have very cheap rates per minute, so this would probably be overall less expensive than going with a prepaid phone. If you were to do what I'm suggesting, then on your bill it would show that you called the company that issued the calling card, and the recipient's phone would show something random, depending on the calling card provider (maybe their number, maybe no number at all).
posted by epimorph at 2:46 PM on September 2

+1 Google Voice.. all your calls will/can show your google voice as the incoming number.. (and outgoing number).
posted by wflanagan at 7:02 PM on September 2

The person on AT&T get get a prepaid GoPhone and throw the phone away (or buy a SIM card of eBay) and stuff it in their AT&T phone without having to worry about it being unlocked or anything. The person with T-Mobile can do the same thing.
posted by floam at 2:07 PM on September 4