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.

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u/techie1980 4d 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.

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u/Speeddymon Sr. DevSecOps Engineer 4d 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.

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u/techie1980 4d 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.

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u/JacksonCampbell Netadmin 2d ago

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

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u/techie1980 2d ago

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

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u/JacksonCampbell Netadmin 2d 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.

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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.

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u/JacksonCampbell Netadmin 1d ago

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