Freedom of the Press Foundation
If you use Signal, the secure messaging app, you may have thought about a second account so you don’t have to give out your personal phone number. The good news is you don’t need another phone plan to use a second Signal account, and you may be able to set it up on a range of devices.
We’ll walk you through how to get a secondary phone number, how to choose the best device for it and also review some safety considerations for using the messaging app.
You can register a Signal account with any phone number you have ongoing control over as long as no one else has registered it. It doesn’t have to be your personal phone number — there are a few ways to get a second phone number.
For those in the United States, the easiest way to set up a secondary number is with Google Voice. (Your Signal messages are only on Signal’s servers, not Google’s servers.) Go to voice.google.com and log in with a Google account. From here you can claim a number, following the verification and registration prompts.
In most countries you can visit a phone store and purchase an inexpensive SIM card to get another number. Read this post by Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to learn how. You can also use a service called Twilio to purchase a phone number for as little as $1 a month, though it requires following some more complex instructions. Learn how.
