Like a lot of people, I use email addresses to catch the spam. I have a Ya hoo address for web sites where I don't care if I ever hear from them after getting past a sign up page. When it is a new vendor or other web site I may want to use email with I make up an email address at my domain which is routed to a general email box. If I get spam to the made up email address it can be easily deleted, but more importantly I know who shared my email address.
But for phone numbers, it's a different story. I had a social meeting on S kype today that I couldn't attend, because Skype requires a phone number ev en though I verified through an email address. Sorry Skype, ain't happenin g.
But then later it occurred to me maybe I could have a spam phone number too ! I have a couple of phone numbers with Google and gave it a try, I can re ceive text messages through that number! They come to me as an email, but that's fine. Typically it's like the email, I just need to give them the n umber they've sent me.
Anyone else do something like this? One advantage is if I start getting sp am to that number, I can change it at Google. That's pretty cool.