Can I buy a "fake" phone number?

Lots of web forms/services want a phone number these days and I'd prefer not to give out my real number unless absolutely necessary. For example, my secondary gmail account always bugs me for phone number and other info... (I always use VPN and also travel a bit so I keep logging on from different countries in terms of IP. google, facebook, etc. consider this suspicious.)

Can I buy a cheap phone number that would provide high privacy as well as some usability through the internet, at least for texting, or better yet, even for VoIP calls (like skype)?

fwiw, i have a tablet with a phone number for texting - I sometimes use that for these forms, but I assume it would be easy to trace or look up, so I don't feel fully comfortable using it. Granted I could just use a random number or an old (expired) number, but the problem is sometimes you actually need to use these numbers to unlock an account or verify it with a text or some such...

 

You don't need to pay money, there are a bunch of free services that does the job:
https://www.google.com/voice
http://www.textplus.com/
http://go-text.me/
http://www.pinger.com/textfree/
http://heywire.com/
http://www.fongo.com/
http://www.ipkall.com/

 

thanks. i'll check those out.