Remember your crazy brain
I used to use a burner phone. Now I use GV. When I had the burner phone, I kept it at the gym. This has the unexpected consequence of metering my dreams. If I couldn't call, the dreaming would only go so far. Unfortunately, the gym wasn't a 24 hour place, so I couldn't always return it to its hiding place before returning home after a dream. So I'd have a backup hiding place. But it always felt like a hot potato. I'd eventually throw it away--they're so cheap! And went through probably half a dozen in 2 years. Now that I have GV, that's a small cost savings. And I can hide it in plain sight, which has the unexpected negative consequence of enabling me to dream all the time (which I can't afford, who can?). Also, you have to remember to erase the outgoing / incoming call history (since that's not sequestered in GV, but ends up piggybacking on your normal call history).
It's all tradeoffs. You have to remember to reason based not on some perfect facts, but the crazy brain you have.
I'm hearing (Google) voices
[QUOTE=PermanentWood;2266431]I've received text messages from Google Voice users where their Google Voice number showed up on my phone as intended. And then they CALLED me moments later and WHALA, got their real phone number showing up on my phone.[/QUOTE]I don't use GV so I may be wrong about all of this, but a friend of mine does and was showing me how it works. It seems best for letting you give out a number which is only loosely / temporarily connected to your real number. Texting was easy as long as you always reply to a text they sent first. Calling out from a cell phone seemed a little more problematic where you could do it wrong and make the call on your phone and not through GV. As I recall, two numbers showed up, the GV passthrough number and the caller's number. If you select the person's number and not the passthrough number the call would bet made directly revealing your number to the called party.
GV does seem effective for keeping your contact information private in many scenarios but you need to understand how it works and be careful to use it correctly.