Given how systems like this are used already, I have to confess that I don't see the point. In theory, this is absolutely a great idea. In practice, however, the vast majority of the population is effectively tribalistic in its choice of platform; they either stick to only answering the phone for people that they know, to the point of utilizing software to block or filter all other callers, or they basically do not ever use their phones for calling and stick to Facebook and similar, with rare text messages to people (again) outside of their circles. The amount of times I've not been able to contact other random people because I don't use Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat is almost comical.

So, who actually ends up using these services? Sadly, spammers and scammers. What generally happens is that entire branches of cons use offices to get ranges of deactivated lines. When they call, it plucks one from the pool solely for the duration of that spam call, where it then goes back to being deactivated once the call is done, rendering it <on the surface> untraceable. While Google claims that few people on their Voice service are offenders, there is a reason that quite a few services and such out there refuse to accept VoiP services, including Google Voice.

So while it would be a cool option, in practice, what would be the legitimate benefit to having a masking service when things are already so far gone that you are required to give out a solid mobile phone number for more and more services?

I think ideas like this are really valuable, especially when they focus on improving privacy without sacrificing everyday usability. Any new communication feature should be reliable, simple, and easy to manage across devices.

Perfect

I briefly read that staunch privacy advocate (and right to repair and just being a great dude) Louis Rossman is starting this up!

Just using signal or its fork molly will do thos easily and it's already an existing peoduct

SMS is inherently insecure, you'd have to wrap it in some secure protocol and many people have moved on to data encrypted messaging instead

This whole topic borders on things like DID's (decentralized identifiers) and SSI (Self-sovereign identity) if you want to go to decent privacy lengths

A number of Blockchains have already started work on this, Cardano being one that I believe has made some good progress

The whole idea of a phone number identifying people has more than passed it's use by date, same with emails in my opinion, but implementing something that is universal that protects identity fully is extremely difficult

Instead of google voice id say more like the cloaked app. One number per contact

I agree that adding new communication features is interesting, but stability and everyday usability should stay the priority. I often test different platforms using simple activities like a general knowledge quiz (https://generalknowledgequiz.co.uk/) to see how smoothly things actually work across devices. Small practical use cases usually reveal the real user experience.

This request has a more popular thread here, https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas/suggestions/43892508-phone-number-alias-masking

Go there to vote as well if this feature matters (or doesn't)

I only use GV with friends/family/specialists - but I use it daily, both as a messenger service (friends/family refuse to use Signal) and to make calls using my laptop. I've had it literally since it was released (and in 2003 was a gmail beta tester, as well). Since migrating to PM in 2015, I've wanted to completely stop using google products.

That said, I would really like to see some existing products improved: drive, calendar, etc. I'm sure you hear this constantly.

There are a LOT of things to finish in the actual tools.
Focus on that instead of new shiny stuff!

This could be included in a proton messenger

Please focus on the existing services.