Shadow/substitution solutions are becoming all the rage as people look for ways to create plausable deniability both from an attack and defense perspective. That’s just a fancy way of saying that more and more people want to be able to disappear.

Safe Talk is a UK company that suggest you use their service in order to

give out a temporary phone number to people you first meet so they can call you – until you know if they’re fit or fit to drop!

If people haven’t started adopting transaction-based IDs for their credit cards (offered by issuers for years now) how likely are they to start using them on their mobile? Maybe the motivation is higher on mobiles because the relationship is more likely to sour in ways that require a disappearing act? Fake name, fake number, imagine the possibilities. Will this be a convenient add-on service for social network sites, or the next big thing for spammers and phishers to abuse? I mean if it is successful as a (legitimate) service, and able to handle the looming liability/trust issues, I wonder how long it will be before this is a standard service from the major carriers.