Is textnow.com Safe?

Well, first, this is a wonderful app to have your own number and make phone calls for free, almost anywhere. Trust me, I have been using this service for more than 2 years. However, it seems suspicious that they do not have a customer service or help desk. Instead of a real support desk, they have a tutorials site, period. Are they legitimate business people offering a service? Mmmh, it is very suspicious and makes me fell unsafe doing business with them. Apart from that, the free service is wonderful. Strange isn’t it?

Unsolicited emails promoting this virtual number service have subject lines that read “You will lose your phone number soon", while the body urges the recipient to call or send an SMS if they don't want to lose their virtual number. The messages are sent to email addresses that have never been used to sign up for Textnow, and the number that the owner is supposedly about to "lose" changes from message to message. The messages -- insisting that the number will be lost "soon" -- also continue to arrive month after month.

Text Now is a nice service that lets you choose your own area code and then pick from a list of phone numbers open in that area code. Then, you can make free calls and texts through Text Now anywhere in the US. It's good for saving others on long distance charges; you can get a number local to their area code. However, the reason why I do not trust this website is because I noticed the web client frequently and randomly redirects the entire page to advertisements. This causes you to lose calls and text messages. This also makes me highly suspicious that they could redirect me to a location that installs crap on my computer automatically. Therefore, DO NOT TRUST the web client. The mobile apps are better.