Burner For iPhone Lets You Create Disposable Phone Numbers

Posted by Rounak Jain on Aug 11, 2012 | Comments (15)

burner-app-iconBurner, a newly released iPhone app, gives your iPhone an alternate, temporary phone number, which you can use for a brief period of time and then dispose off.

The app is primarily meant for creating a private line for communication for voice call and texts.

The app’s description on the App Store:

Burner is a privacy layer for your phone, providing alias phone numbers at the push of a button.

Fast, safe, and totally private – get Burner numbers as often as you need them, and get as many as you want.

Give out Burner numbers, and make and get voice calls and SMS texts, just like any other phone number. Keep them for a month, or longer. Burn them when you’re done.

Perfect for dating, job searches, short-term projects, craigslist transactions, Twitter, Tumblr, and other social media, and for whenever else you want to be in touch and want to keep it on a private line, or don’t want to give out your real number.

The app costs $1.99 on the App Store and comes with enough preloaded credit to try the service. After that’s used up you can buy more credits using In-App Purchases. The cheapest burner line you can buy is the mini-burner, which gives you a phone number that lasts for 20 minutes of voice and 60 texts, or 7 days, whichever’s earlier.

You can of course burn the number before it expires, erasing with it your association with the phone line. If someone ever calls on a discarded number, an out-of-service message will be played.

The app works only in US and Canada, and isn’t available for the iPod touch or iPad.

Here’s a video demo of the app:

You can buy the app from the App Store for $1.99.

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Categories : iPhone Apps


  • WildBill9478

    So an app for drug dealers. Nice.

  • 357

    Players gonna play.

  • joeplace

    I don’t know that drug dealers would use this. The company probably has logs of when the number was associated with whom.

    • http://rounak.me/ Rounak Jain

      I want to see what happens when some govt agency tries to subpeona information about suspected law breakers. Most probably, this is already covered in the app’s TOS, and they’ll oblige.

      • http://rounak.me/ Rounak Jain

        “Ad Hoc Labs reserves the right to investigate and take appropriate legal action against anyone who, in Ad Hoc Labs’s sole discretion, violates this provision, including without limitation, removing the offending content from the Service, suspending or terminating the account of such violators and reporting you to the law enforcement authorities. You agree to not use the Service to:”
        From here: http://burnerapp.com/burner_tos.html

  • http://www.iphonehacks.com iPhoneHacks

    Instead of focussing on how the app can be misused, we should focus on how the app can be useful.

    It’s a great way to keep your primary number private. It’s surprising no one thought about this earlier.

  • MuscleMass

    Drug dealers don’t need this app. With all the money at stake, the big boys use pre-paid phones. Then they just toss or “burn” the phone once the deed is done. Police can still track android and iOS devices. Burner can be used for good, not just for evil.

  • wirelezz

    THIS APP DOES NOT WORK IN CANADA !!! I PAID FOR THE APP IN CANADA ITUNES !! SCAM !!

    • http://www.iphonehacks.com iPhoneHacks

      Try changing the area code to a different one to see if it works. It looks like they don’t have access to some area codes, which could cause this issue.

      A user on the App Store confirmed that he managed to create/burn a phone number after changing the area code.

  • rebby

    perfect app for kidnapper too :P

  • HumanCentiPad

    This is perfect solution for all my working girls. I’m sick of buying these bitches new virgin phones every week!

  • fireknight25

    Well, if you read the user agreement carefully, you’ll know it doesn’t protect you from breaking the law. If law enforcement have warrant for the information, the Burner company will gladly give your information to them because it is part of the registering process to give them your information before you could use the app. If you going to use this app for crime, don’t be surprise when SWAT team kick in your door. Stick with the prepay phone if you want to be a successful criminal douche bag.

  • promiscuous

    Drug dealers are not that smart to use stuff like this. If they were, they would keep their a..es out of jail. This app is good for dating. I wanna date 200 girls before I turn 30. This app serves my cause.

  • Dumb

    I have this app already. It’s called Google Voice

  • http://twitter.com/DickJim3 Richard James

    Use RingShuffle — it’s nearly the exact same thing but free.