Private Phone-Number App Comparison: Identity, Retention, Porting, and Limits

Status: page build populated from final phone tool cells (research-builder, cp-iq7t6, 2026-10-01); every rendered value transcludes a persisted tool cell (content_work.privacy_tool_cells) or is labelled a typed unknown. Content is author-populated and has not yet passed research-validator grounding, copy-editor fidelity review, persona-counsel, persona-bruce (GEO), or persona-arachne (structural) in the publish gauntlet. Not legal advice.

Short answer

This page compares a bounded, five-vendor phone-number roster (Burner, Hushed, MySudo, Cloaked, Google Voice, listed here alphabetically by operating entity) on what each service masks, who still receives identity information, retention, portability, and lawful-request handling. Every rendered value transcludes a captured tool cell with its claim label, source, and capture date, or is marked a typed unknown. No row is highlighted and no vendor is singled out as preferred.

What the phone-number service masks

A private-number service replaces the number a counterparty sees with a separate, vendor-issued number. The boundary is limited to the counterparty-facing number and does not imply that a provider, carrier, platform, or lawful recipient lacks identity information. What each vendor itself documents about issuance and plan/platform scope is in the comparison table below.

Who still receives identity information

Every vendor in this roster collects at least one identifier at signup or at a later verification trigger, and names a collecting actor for it (the vendor itself, a telephony or identity-verification partner, or in Burner's case, Apple or Google for sign-in). The signup/later-verification table below keeps collecting actor, plan, and region separate per vendor rather than merging them into one claim.

Signup identifiers and later verification triggers

Signup identifiers (what is asked when an account is first created) and later verification triggers (what can be asked afterward, for a specific capability) remain separate columns below. Cloaked's captured policy and terms do not disclose a bounded signup-identifier or later-trigger tuple for the phone product; both cells are typed unknowns rather than inferred from the company's general data-collection language.

Data retained and retention periods

Retention is reported per vendor at whatever grain the vendor itself publishes (a fixed calendar period, a deletion-triggered duration, or a general necessity/legal-purpose rule). A missing retention statement remains a typed unknown; it is not rendered as zero retention.

Portability and operational constraints

Port-in and port-out are documented separately per vendor below, including where the vendor's own sources conflict (Burner's FAQ and Terms disagree on port-out, and both are preserved rather than resolved by this page). Portability is kept separate from ordinary product availability and from number recycling.

Lawful-request process and transparency reporting

Every vendor in this roster describes a lawful-request or legal-process procedure; none of the five publishes a request count, period, or unit in the sources captured for this page. That absence is a typed unknown, not a published zero.

Claim labels, sources, and capture dates

Every value on this page carries a claim type (vendor_stated for all cells except Burner's source-availability cell, which is public_repository), a source origin, a capture date, and a fetch-event reference. All captures for this roster land on 2026-09-30. No independently_tested claim is rendered on this page. The evidence ledger below lists every rendered attribute per vendor with its own citation.

Corrections and version history

The public correction procedure is maintained on the methodology hub. 5 vendors are recorded for the phone class; no correction has been filed against any of them as of 2026-10-01. This page uses the same correction process as every other vendor on the site; there is no vendor-specific private correction channel.

Number type and issuance countries

Number type is reported only where the vendor's own captured text uses that term; Hushed and Cloaked describe their numbers as VoIP in the captured source, Burner, MySudo, and Google Voice do not use that term in the captured text, so their number type is a typed unknown rather than an inferred classification. Issuance country, user eligibility, and calling destination remain separate fields.

Port-in, port-out, and number recycling

Port-in, port-out, and recycling are reported as three separate facts per vendor. Support for porting a number in is never treated as a statement about recycling policy for a different, later-released number.

Platforms and use limitations

The frozen phone tool-cell schema has no platform-compatibility or operational-limits attribute, so every vendor row below is a typed unknown for both fields. This is a methodology gap in what this page's pinned schema captures, not a finding that any vendor is undocumented on these points elsewhere. No hands-on compatibility testing is claimed anywhere on this page.

Sources

The companion sources.json carries all 45 rendered phone tool-cell attributes (9 per vendor; a tenth substrate attribute, deletion, exists per vendor but is outside this page's allowed-evidence list and is not rendered here), each with its claim type, source origin, source link, and capture date. Rendered fields are bounded to the U6 page-spec allowed_evidence list. The substrate also carries a 'deletion' phone attribute per vendor; it is not in U6's allowed_evidence and is intentionally not rendered on this page. This content is author-populated (research-builder) from the persisted tool cells and has not yet passed the rig's remaining publish gauntlet: research-validator grounding, copy-editor fidelity review, persona-counsel, persona-bruce (GEO), and persona-arachne (structural).

Not legal advice

Phone-number services, carrier controls, provider policies, and verification flows can change. This page is a source-bound comparison and not operational, legal, financial, or compliance guidance.