There are many ways to describe Voice-over-IP, or VoIP. I’ve seen it called an anonymous, internet, alias, or throwaway phone number (and more). Regardless of the name, I personally consider VoIP to be a healthy part of a good privacy and security strategy. The advantages are endless. For one, VoIP is harder to SIM Swap compared to a normal SIM phone number. VoIP can also help provide you privacy since most SIM numbers can easily be Googled or looked up on any number of the hundreds of people search sites and return information about the carrier and who the number is registered to. On the day-to-day, VoIP – combined with other strategies I recommend on The New Oil – can help reduce spam calls/texts, prevent would-be stalkers, create healthy work/life balances, control what information people (like prospective employers) can find about you, and help compartmentalize or reduce tracking by big corporations. Sadly, VoIP is a tool that’s not widely available in many countries, but for those with access to it, VoIP can provide numerous benefits and should at very least be considered. So this week let’s explore some of the best VoIP options currently available for consumers.
This is a pretty bad article imho. It only recommends voip with their own special apps. Nothing about standard SIP services. I’ve been using Vitelity and Twilio and others are out there. The article mentions voip.ms as “honorable mention” but says it’s hard to use. That’s kind of silly. Linphone is pretty easy to configure, for example.
Also Localphone, Callcentric, Anveo… the list goes on.
And if you don’t like using a SIP app on a cell phone, you can always buy a desk or cordless SIP phone. Panasonic is a well known brand.
There are quite a few options (and feature sets, and pricing structures) available if you’re willing to learn.
Linphone is the only one I’ve tried, because it’s on F-droid. It’s not great but I do use it sometimes. There is also a device called an ATA that is basically a SIP adapter for a standard analog phone.
Yes, analog terminal adapters do exist, can be found for cheap, and can be handy if you must keep your old phone or fax machine. In my experience, though, native SIP phones work and sound better.
Can you recommend a cheap model? I need something that is absolutely butt simple to operate, for my elderly mom. An old fashioned analog phone had seemed like just the thing.
I haven’t shopped for them in years, and even then, I wasn’t looking for simple ones. You might try asking on this forum:
https://www.dslreports.com/forum/voip
If she isn’t good with tech but is already comfortable with a particular style of analog phone, an ATA (that you set up for her) might be a good choice.
Thanks. I have also thought about customizing Linphone or something similar to make it simpler, then putting it on an old Android phone in Kiosk mode (phone only runs one app) and wrapping a box around it. Maybe I’ll look into that a little more too.
I actually got lots of pain to get linphone to connect to voip.ms. is there any up to date guide on how to set it up?
The main non obvious thing I remember is saying it to use a faster codec even with slow Internet. Otherwise it made awful static over the conversation.