Let Your Free Google Voice Telephone Number Manage Your Voicemail and Screen Out Spammers By Philip Siddons We all could use an alternative phone number (and disposable email accounts). We need these things to give us time to discern whether we want to allow people or businesses access to our communication. Spammers and Robocalls have brought us to this. On one hand, it is relatively easy to put a caller on your block list on your phone. (You do this by going into your Recents list in your Phone function and to the right of a recent call (from a spamming Robocall), you click on the I with a circle around it, scroll way down to the bottom, and click on Block this Caller. You then go to the upper left corner and tap on the <Recents line to back out, saving these settings. If that automated spamming robocall computer calls your number again, it won t get through. Unfortunately, their spamming system will eventually call from another number. One way to avoid calls back from unwanted callers is to have a disposible telephone number OR, a number sophisticated enough to block out a number which you have dsignated as unwanted. The free telephone number from Google Voice is a breath of fresh air. With Google Voice, you can give vendors and strangers your Google Voice phone number and the Google number will automatically ring their calls through to your real phone number. The caller won t know that is happening, thinking that the number you gave them is your cell phone number. Your Google Voice phone number is free and using it from the United States and Canada is almost always free. [Apparently there are a few destinations that will coast 1 cent per minute, depending on the specific phone number and local currency. You can look up the cost through the calling credit page for your Google account.] After you get your free Google Voice number through your Google account, follow these instructions and you will be able to have the following highly useful actions enabled with your Google Voice telephone number: 1. When your Google Voice telephone number is called, it will ring on your cell phone. The caller never knows your real cell phone number but can still get through to you (if you want them to do so). 2. If you don t answer the call, Google Voice can take over your own phone s voicemail with your desired system-generated or personally created outgoing greeting. 3. If a caller calls your Google Voice telephone number and you don t answer it, the caller can leave a voice message. Also, if a caller calls your cell number, Google Voice can be configured to provide voicemail for that number as well. 4. Here is where the technology magic happens. If you don t answer your phone call, Google voice will (1) transcribe any 1
voice message left on either your cellphone number or your Google telephone number. 5. When someone does leave a voice message, Google Voice will (2) send an email to your designated email account with the transcription of the voiced message AND (3) text you the transcription of their message. This is tremendously helpful if you are busy or in a meeting and just want to read the content of the message without playing back the recorded voicemail to hear it. (If the caller doesn t leave you a voice message, you will be notified that you got a call from the caller s number.) 6. If you have the Google Voice app on your smart phone (highly recommended), and someone leaves a voicemail message, your smartphone app will show a small number on the surface of the app icon, indicating the number of calls and voice mails that have arrived for you. 7. With the Google Voice app on your cell phone, you can tap the icon and read and/or listen to any voicemail messages you have. You can call the number back and even text the caller. How to Set Up Your Google Voice Account 1. First, Adjust Your Settings In Your Google Voice Account on the Internet You ll likely use your computer s browser for this. First, log into your Google Voice account, using your Gmail address and your Google password. Your Google Voice telephone number will show in the lower left of your screen (see blue arrow). To set up Google Voice with the above mentioned features and your preferences, click on the gear in the upper right part of your screen (see red arrow). 2
Once you click on the gear, a menu drops down. When it does, click on the Settings choice (see red arrows). Your Google Voice telephone number will appear in two places on this screen (see the green arrows). Your name will appear on the screen where you see the blue arrow. 3
Your Gmail address Notice the red arrow. When you are just setting it up, it will say Activate Google voicemail on this phone. In the screen shot above, it says Deactivaate because my Google Voice numbedr is already activated. But on your screen, it will say Activate. Click on it (because you want to do this because you want Google Voice to manage your Google Voice number AND your regular cell number messages). It will then take you to another setup screen (not shown here) that shows you a combination of ** and ## and numbers. Dial those exact characters on your cell phone (as if you are telephoning that weird character and number combination) and than hit your call button (just as you do when you are telephoning someone, right after you ve typed in their telephone number). In a few seconds, your telephone screen will essentially say you ve successfully activated this feature of Google Voice managing the voicemail for both your cell phone and your Google Voice numbers. After you ve done this, the screen will say Deactivate Google voicemail on this phone. As the screen shot above says. This means that Google Voice is, now, activated to manage voice mails on both your cell phone AND your Google Voice number. You want it this way. (If you ever decide you do not want your Google Voice number activated to manage both of your phone number voice mails, go through same procedure to Deactivate it.) Note: you can have your Google Voice number ring as many other telephones as you want. It can ring additional cell phones or landlines. 4
Look below your telephone number on this page and click on the Edit button (see red arrow). Scroll down and click on the text Show advanced settings (see red arrow) 5
In this screen, set your preferences for when you want your phone to ring or not ring see the red arrows). It is very important to select Ring my other phones before going to voice mail (see the blue arrow). Then click on the Save button (see green arrow). Lastly, look up to the top of the horizontal menu bar and click on the Voicemail & Text menu item (see red arrow below). 6
This will bring you to the Voicemail & Text page: The green arrow is where your Google Voice number will show. The blue arrow shows your chosen email account to which Google will send the transcriptions of the Google voice messagess. *Because you might not want the standard Google greeting given to the caller (who is leaving a voice message), you probably want to record your own message, something like You ve reached the voice mail of (your name). Please leave a message. To do that, (see the red arrow below), click on the Record New Greeting button (near the top of the screen). It will prompt you through recording a personalized message, using your cell phone to record your outgoing message which is saved on the Google Voice server. In the section called Voicemail Transcripts, if you check Transcribe voicemails, Google Voice will transcribe the words that the caller has spoken in their voice message. It is the only way to have Google transcribe a message left through your Google Voice telephone number. Once you ve done all of this, click on the Save changes button at the bottom of the screen (see black arrow). 7
Now, as a test, have someone else call your Google Voice number and don t answer it. When they leave a test voice message and hang up, you ll receive notification in two ways that they called as well as any message they ve left. 1. If your settings are correct, you ll get a text message containing a transcript of their voice message. 2. You ll also receive an email with the same information. Managing Your Google Voice Voicemails Blocking A Caller s Number From Using Your Google Voice Phone Number When you log into your Google Voice account, you will see the number that called you. In this screen show below, you see an (888) toll-free number that attempted to call my Google Voice number. It happens that the caller didn t leave a voice message so it was probably either a Robo call (that disconnects if there is no live answer) or it was a wrongly-dialed number. To prevent that number from getting through to your Google Voice number again (to block them), put a check in the check box to the left of that number (see the red arrow). 8
As soon as you put a check mark in that check box, you will get a new screen (shown below), giving you the options to either Archive (the checked phone caller), Mark it as Spam or simply Delete it. If you don t want them to be able to call your Google Voice number again, click on the Spam button. If you click on the left navigation menu and choose Voicemails (see the blue arrow), you ll see, in this example below, the two experimental voice mails I left myself (red arrows). 9
Clicking on a check box next to one of the voice mails (red arrow), just as in dealing with other calls in your Inbox, a new tool bar is revealed and you can either Archive, mark it as Spam or Delete it (see the blue arrows). Below, notice that the transcribed expimental voice message is displayed. You can Call them back, Text them or click on more. If you click on the word more (see the red arrow), you get these choices in the menu: No other service (and certainly not even the paid services mentioned in the companion article) offer this wide array of management choices for an alternative phone number. 10
2. Setting Up Google Voice On Your Cell Phone Here is what the Google Voice app icon looks like (see the red arrow but they could change the icon s appearance anytime): Once inside the Google Voice cell phone app, click on the Settings gear (at the bottom right of the screen (see the red arrow): 11
In the Google Voice application s Settings screen, be sure you do NOT have the Do not disturb on and the Use Click2Call (Click2Call will first call your phone and then connect your call instead of dialing out via a Google Voice access number ) (See the red arrows.) Scroll downward and click on your name (to the right of This phone. This screen shows Philip Siddons but click on your name. 12
In this screen, to the right of your name, you will see your cell phone number (green arrow).. Finally, to leave the settings as they are and exit, click on the black back arrow in the upper top left corner. The green arrow points to what is your cell phone number. BE SURE there is a check mark to the right of your name as you see above (see red arrow. When all these things are in place, (see black arrow) to back out of this screen, leaving these settings as you see them. Tap your home key to exit out of the app, leaving all of these settings as they are. 13
Consider Other Privacy Features Like Disposible Telephone and Email Accounts The numerous alternatives to Google Voice charge for their services. With Burner, you can Burn or destroy a temporary telephone number from which some bothersome person is calling from. They charge you $5 a month. The downside of disposable phone numbers is when you eliminate a number, you lose it and all your good contacts can no longer use that number to call you. Then you have to let all your contacts know your new replacement number. The same thing can now be had with Blur (formerly called Do Not Track Me. This service is about $45 a year. In addition to being able to get rid of a phone number, it also lets you mask your online charge card number, replacing it with a one-time-use number. This is an innovative safety mechanism that would prevent a dishonest worker, at a distant online company, from copying down and reusing your real charge card number somewhere else. (I once got a call from a credit card company, asking me if I knew about a purchase of electronics in South Carolina. Clearly someone in that state used my credit card number. Fortunately, the credit card company ate the cost of that theft.) Blur also has a disposable email feature. In Blur, you can turn on and off disposible email addresses as well as their temporary telephone 14 numbers. For controlling an alternative telephone number, Blur is similar to the free Google Voice and may be worth your while for all of their other features like masking credit cards. There is also Too which lets you rent a phone number for one month for $1.99. There is also Shuffle which lets you create additional, disposable phone numbers. You can rent a phone number for a month for calling or texting as well as receiving voicemail through your phone. Shuffle s cost is $1.99 a phone number plus 1.5 cents per minute of use. For disposible emails, there is the Smamex online service. For a modest $9.95 a year. you can generate an unlimited number of disposable email accounts. This allows you to eliminate any vendor or person from getting to your real email. When someone sends an email to your Spamex email, it will forward their message directly to your real email and the sender won t know that is happening. If you respond to that email, the receipant thinks that it is coming from your Spamex email. With a disposible email from Spamex, you can even use an owned domain name and make up unlimited emails from that domain name. I use Spamex for my websites and with most relationships with new vendors with whom I have not had a history. My Recommendations Besides the no-cost factor of Google Voice and the ability of it to transcribe to text any voice mail for its Google number AND your cellphone, you can turn the phone number it off selectively for unwanted callers. This keeps Robocallers away and allows only trusted people and companies to connect you. To prevent spammers from burdening your email inbox, use Spamex.com and turn off any unwanted emails if they start getting unwanted spam. Take a good look at Blur for all of their telephone, email and one-use credit card features.