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My wife asked me about a strange number that had shown up on her cell phone. She went to the Google and found out that it had been reported by others. Some as “what is this?”, some for bill collectors, some for solicitations, etc.

It turns out I that I had called her using Skype and I don’t have a caller-id number set to my cell phone or a SKYPE IN number so the dial out number is from a pool and that pool number gets a lot of use. Of course, no is posting “my husband” called on this number since those with explanation (and presumably desired calls) don’t generate the energy to post to the net.

The solution choices seem to be to

  1. buy SKYPE IN to get a specific number $75/yr (plus ability for folks to call in)

  2. map number to one’s cell phone

  3. map number to one’s Google Voice number

  4. live with issue

I was going to try choice #3. To do this, the Google Voice number has to receive SMS. One way to do this is to map SMS messages to Google Voice to one’s e-mail. Note it costs you $0.11 on Skype to send the configuration message. After a substantial number for $0.11 attempts, I was not able to get the underlying SMS message (it never showed in Google Mail.) So for the moment, I am using option 4 while I weigh the tradeoffs.

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