Digital Trends

By shielding your actual phone number from callers, Ccube lets the Craigslist community contact you without giving away too much.

How do you sell your prized collection of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures on Craigslist without giving away your home phone number to millions of psychos ready to kill you in your sleep for a still-in-package Leonardo? Well, Ccube, for one. The company that bills itself as the first over-the-phone social network is offering “Call me on Ccube” buttons for Craigslist users who want to remain anonymous when they buy and sell goods or look for romance.

The company acts as an intermediary to connect calls without ever revealing to the caller what number they are reaching a person at. Users can be reached via landline, mobile phone, or VoIP service while retaining their anonymity. Callers can even hear a voice profile from the person they’re calling before they speak to them, to make sure they’re comfortable connecting.

“Our new click-to-call feature and 'Call me on Ccube' buttons are designed to help create a searchable, single degree of separation for Craigslist users based on their common needs and interests – from selling products and services to finding a date,” said Ccube CEO Mahesh Lalwani, in a statement.

Granted, Craigslist users could always remain anonymous through e-mail, instant messaging services, or even competing voice options like Skype, but Ccube offers an additional measure of convenience by allowing users to keep their most familiar mode of communication – the telephone – and anonymizing it. Unlike those other services though, Cccube comes with a price. The first 30 minutes of any month’s conversations are free, but if users exceed it, they will have to pay $7 for 250 minutes or $20 for 1,000 minutes. A small price for anonymity, some would say, but just remember you still have to meet “ninjaturtles_collector666” in person to make the exchange.