How to Make Your Mobile Phone Number Appear As a Private Number

Do you know that there are many benefits for not having your number shown to the person you are calling? We just have to make it visible as Private Number. Imagine you can stall your friends or scare the hell out of them with such trick. If you make your number as Private, the person you are calling can’t be able to see your number but if they call you, you can see their numbers.

In a day to day life, all of us are often required to call several people, out of which many would be absolutely unknown to us. Revealing our personal phone numbers (especially women) to an unknown person has caused several incidents of threat and malicious activities. So, making your mobile number Private, you can come across all the problems when you displayed your number.

Here’s how you can make your mobile number appear as private:

• First, let us learn about how to enable Private Number Service and some prerequisites.
• Your mobile phone should have the option to block caller ID. Most phones have this option.
• Your mobile operator should allow it. Generally, mobile operators in India do not permit private numbers.
• Mobile operators do take a special amount of charge for activating private numbers.
• For more details and activation, contact your customer care.
• Mostly, this service is not available to prepaid users, but few networks might allow.

After you have these priors sorted out, then you need to hide your caller ID from your phone using the above method you can hide it from your device’s settings. If you have activated the private caller ID service then you can also use it for occasional calling. Imagine you have to call xxx-xxx-xxxx then before calling you can simply add the code *31# to the mobile number to block your caller ID then your dialer should call- *31#xxx-xxx-xxxx.

There are three options for hiding one’s phone number and making a private call.

1. Use Caller ID Blocking Prefix:

The caller ID blocking prefix is different for all or possibly same for some countries. In many countries, you can enter a code before you dial a number and your phone number will be blocked from appearing on the recipient’s caller ID. The code varies depending on your country and your service provider, and remember, it is not possible to block in all countries. In India, the prefix is *31#. Enter the prefix, followed by the number you are dialling. For example, if you are in the India and want to call xxx-xxx-xxxx, you would enter *31#xxxxxxxxxx.

North America: *67 or #31#, Albania, Australia, Denmark, Greece, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway: #31#, Argentina, Iceland, Switzerland, South Africa: *31*, Germany: *31# or #31#, Hong Kong: 133, Japan: 184, UK and Ireland: 141, New Zealand: 0197 (Telecom) or *67 (Vodafone), Australia: 1831 or #31#, India: *31#.

Countries not listed here, chances are you can use either *67 or #31#.

2. Permanent Caller ID Blocking:

If you want to hide your caller ID for all of your phone calls, you can contact your carrier and set up permanent Caller ID blocking. There is typically a charge for this, and the charges and terms will vary from carrier to carrier.

• Most pre-paid plans cannot enable permanent Caller ID blocking.
• India users need to enable Caller ID blocking before they can use the blocking prefix.

3. Hide your Number through your Device Settings:

Many phones allow you to block your Caller ID information by changing the phone’s settings. If your phone does not have the option to do this, then it is not allowed by your carrier, and you will have to try one of the previous steps.

• Android 4.1 & later: Open the Phone app > Menu > Call settings > Caller ID > Hide number.
• iPhone: Open the Settings app > Phone > Show My Caller ID > Toggle the slider to OFF.
• Windows: Open the Phone app > More button (…) > Settings > Show my caller ID to > No one/My contacts.

Drawbacks of Activating Private Number Service:

1. Some people have Anonymous Call Rejection enabled, which means your call will not be able to complete unless you call from an unblocked number.
2. If you want to make an unblocked call after setting up a block on all your outgoing calls, you will need to enter the unblocking prefix before the phone number. In India, this prefix is not specified so you can use *31# as most GSM networks use this.

That’s how you can make your mobile number as a Private Number. If you guys know some other tricks to change number into Private, share with us in the comments section below.

I hope this article helps you to increase your privacy and security. If any of the methods is not working for your network, let us know in the below comments. We will try to help you as soon as possible.

Which method do you use to make your mobile phone number appear as a Private number?