Doosra’s Trusted Contacts feature

During our launch on 25th May, we published an article that gave the back-story of Doosra, a secondary virtual phone number service to give at places you’re worried might spam you later or circulate your number for others to spam.

We spent over 2 years refining and perfecting this product to be more than just another virtual number and released it with 5 core features:

• Call Filter
• Calls and Messages Log
• Trusted Contacts
• Trusted Services
• Secure Call-back

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In this article, we elaborate on one of them: Trusted Contacts

How does it work?

Doosra’s call filter automatically blocks all calls and shows them in the call log. However, if you add a certain caller as a Trusted Contact, the calls from that specific number will bypass the call filter and will be forwarded to your personal number.

During initial product feedback, we got a few comments from users:

Signed up for Doosra. If we import existing selected contacts, that will be easy to add trusted contacts within the app.

Another user commented:

Any chance I can add trusted contacts directly from my phone book…I am a lazy boy

Privacy Matters….

Firstly, we don’t take access to your contact book because we care deeply about your privacy. There are way too many apps today that take access to your contact book, only to mine them later for behavioral profiling and data monetization. We’re vehemently opposed to this approach. You can read our privacy doctrine here

Secondly, our thesis is that for the people you care about, you will give your pehla (primary) number and not the Doosra virtual number. As a result, we conclude that your close friends and family will already have your personal number and do not need to be added as a trusted contact.

On the other hand, Doosra number is for places and people that bother you.. Stores, Telemarketers, Loyalty discounts etc. However, there will be certain cases where some person (to whom you give your Doosra number) should be able to reach you over the phone for a limited period of time.

When is it helpful?

Give a Doosra number to local pharmacies

Simply put, this feature is for “temporary contacts”.

For example, you go to a car dealership or a pharmacy; you give your Doosra virtual mobile number but need the cashier or sales rep to reach you for the next few days as you coordinate a delivery or negotiate rates with him/her. So, you add that person as a trusted contact and receive calls as usual without exposing your personal number.

When your work is done, remove him/her from the trusted contact list… and the calls get filtered as before.

Get a virtual phone number with Doosra, for spam-calls-free communications!