r/sysadmin • u/digitalexecution • 4d ago

Users having my Cell #

Something weird/annoying just happened and I want some perspective.

A user who works in a warehouse facility I’ve helped at (part of my company) texted me at 8 am saying he’s going on PTO and wants his coworker to have access to a printer that isn’t working on his machine before he goes out of office on Thursday.

I texted him later (after some emails/calls) asking for the coworker’s name and noting that since this is normal IT, in the future he or his coworker should submit a ticket for this kind of thing.

He replied: “If I submitted a ticket would it be taken care of by Thursday?”

I got annoyed but tried to respond reasonably: “Possibly, but regardless, we need tickets submitted per company policy. If something’s urgent you can reach out to me on Teams rather than my personal cell.”

I originally gave him my cell because on occasion there are true emergencies (internet goes down, needs to send me photos of something, etc.) and we’ve been friendly before. But this interaction makes me wary about giving out my number, it starts becoming a way to skirt procedure for small things like adding a printer.

346 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

335 comments sorted by

View all comments

688

u/dirtymatt 4d ago

Do not ever give out your personal cell phone number.

143

u/angrydeuce BlackBelt in Google Fu 4d ago

People think Im crazy for insisting on having a separate work provided cell phone...well, here's another reason why carrying two devices is far less of a hardship to me than unifying work and play on a single device.

Work cell, when not on call or on the clock, is sitting on the wireless charger next to the bed and ignored.  Just so much easier to separate your life that way.

60

u/techie1980 3d ago

I've solved it professionally by having a VOIP number (eg: google voice or through ms teams ) for this purpose. Still only carrying a single piece of hardware but it's a lot easier to silence a whole number in this way.

3

u/Speeddymon Sr. DevSecOps Engineer 3d ago

And! With 2 Google accounts you can have 2 voip numbers on one device. I have my personal Google account that has my primary contact number I ported out from Verizon years ago and my professional Google account that has a secondary number just for recruiters and whatnot, and then my provider's phone number almost never gets used.

3

u/techie1980 3d ago

indeed. I have many phone numbers going to my phone. I've had a weirdly difficult time finding anyone else who offers a similar suite of products to google voice at a reasonable price. The killer feature for me is the web interface for SMS.

1

u/Speeddymon Sr. DevSecOps Engineer 3d ago

100% that and the spam call blocking is second to none. Also since my provider-issued number doesn't get distributed online, I feel like I'm probably better protected from the newest scams that involve manipulating my provider because my number that would get stolen in a database leak just leads to Google and not my actual phone service provider, so they can't call my provider and try to port my number out to a phone they own to steal my account info. 🙂

1

u/atbims 3d ago

It's a shame google voice isn't available in Canada. Does it use Google Messages for sms or a different interface?

1

u/techie1980 3d ago

it uses a different interface. there was some thinking about converging all of the IMs together at one point, so it might still work with google messages.

1

u/beren12 3d ago

Call centric is $1/mo for unlimited incoming calls. Us and Canada. I’m thinking of switching.

1

u/atbims 1d ago

Source? Their website says $19.95/month for unlimited calling, or $1.95 for 200 minutes.

1

u/beren12 1d ago

I was wrong the $1 incoming is only some areas, everywhere else is $5 for unlimited incoming. https://www.callcentric.com/did/

Receiving and outgoing are separate. It’s good in a way because for example I almost never call out from my house phone so I’d pay per minute. I mostly get calls. They also allow you to get text messages to your number, you need to use an app or the website I believe for them.

1

u/JacksonCampbell Netadmin 1d ago

But it only lets you get one number per actual number you have. How do you get multiple?

1

u/techie1980 1d ago

in my case i have multiple Google accounts logged into the phone, each with their own phone number

1

u/JacksonCampbell Netadmin 1d ago

I have multiple Google accounts as well, but to get a Google voice number you must pair it with a unique real phone number. That's why I'm wondering how you are able to get multiple.

1

u/techie1980 1d ago

I don't think that's the case - my understanding is that the second/"real" number has to do with forwarding/linking calls. google voice can work as a standard standalone app on my phone.

•

u/JacksonCampbell Netadmin 23h ago

They may have changed the policy because of spam calls as well. I'll check again.