How Do I Prevent My Address Being Traced Via Mobile Number?
Q.
Is there any way of giving out a mobile number without the recipient being able to trace my address? In my case, I am acting as a mentor to a prisoner serving a life sentence and the only way to speak over the phone is to give out my number.
Is there any way I can avoid the possibility of being tracked down!?
A.
There are now many ways that people can trace the owner of a mobile phone number to get their address and it is becoming easier all the time. Although it is possible to choose to withdraw your number from some directories such as the Google Phonebook, many online directories may still get access to your number, as all phones and sims that you buy from reputable dealers or the Internet would have to be registered to your name and address.
In your case, you have a very valid reason for preventing your number from being traced and the only way to do this is to avoid using your own mobile number. As you are an official mentor for a prisoner, it should be possible to ask the prison concerned or a police station that you work with for help. If someone at the prison or police station were to buy a sim card from your mobile phone provider, or you simply got permission to do this and have the sim card sent to the prison for you to collect, this would cost them only a minimal amount of money. It would be a legitimate expense to aid you providing your service and they should be able to pay, but even if you had to meet the cost yourself, it would be a small amount to pay for peace of mind.
The sim card would be registered to the prison address. You could swap over the sim card into your phone for making the mentoring calls, or buy a cheap or second hand phone to put the extra sim into. Calls made from the mobile number on the new sim card could only be traced back to the prison or police station and you could dispose of the sim card once the period of mentoring was over, either by returning it to the prison for future use, or by simply throwing it away. Your own mobile phone number would never be known to the prisoner concerned and they would not be able to trace your address.
This would be better than buying a phone from a market stall or privately, without giving your name and address as it would avoid the number of that phone being traced to the name and address of the person who initially bought and registered it, possibly compromising their privacy and even safety.
