Privacy and data

Can a virtual number be traced back to me?

Answer

The number always traces to the provider: ranges are public and resolve to whoever leases them, so ours resolve to HushSMS. Tracing to you depends on what we retain, which is no identity, no payment instrument and no persistent IP record. A clean number used from your home IP on an account with your real name is not private: the number is rarely the weak link.

The longer version

Deanonymisation in practice is almost never cryptographic or telecoms-level; it is a join between two things you did not think of as related. The recurring ones are mundane: the same browser fingerprint as everywhere else, a recovery email pointing at a personal address, a transparent-chain payment funded straight from an exchange holding your passport, or the anonymous number added to an account that already has your legal name on it. Each of those defeats the number regardless of how the number was bought. Threat-model the whole session or none of it, because the weakest element sets the outcome and it is usually not the part you paid for.