What Is a Burner Phone, and When Should You Use a Secret Phone Number?
Need a phone number that can vanish at a moment's notice? Burner phones offer temporary anonymity for undercover chats, emergencies, or just avoiding those pesky spam calls. Burners are not only for criminals in movies—they might be the right call for you.
A "burner SIM" is a related term, and refers to a cheap, prepaid SIM card that you can insert into another phone. You may plan on only using the SIM card for a limited period of time and not linking it to your real identity.
What Is a Burner?
A burner phone is typically a cheap, prepaid mobile phone that the owner doesn't intend to use long-term. These phones have traditionally been purchased with cash to avoid any kind of paper trail that would tie the phone number to an individual.
The term was popularized in the hit 2002 HBO series The Wire, where "burners" were used to avoid detection by authorities. Once a number was suspected of being compromised, the device was discarded or "burned" so that the trail would go cold.
Since the rise of the iPhone and Android devices, burners are more commonly referred to as "feature phones" or "dumb phones" since the smartphones of today didn't exist in the early 2000s. While the term "burner phone" is still common, SIM cards could also be used in such a manner.
Instead of purchasing an entirely new device, a burner SIM can be used in a smartphone to switch between numbers for a variety of reasons. Some smartphones can even accommodate more than one SIM at a time for this purpose. With that in mind, some of the applications of a burner phone rely solely on having a second dedicated device you can use.
Why Would You Use a Burner?
You might use a burner phone or SIM to protect your identity. If you can manage to procure a handset or SIM card that isn't linked to your real-world identity, you can use the number without the risk of being identified.
There are all sorts of reasons that someone might want to remain anonymous. Maybe you're phoning in an anonymous tip to an
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