China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has approved 10 companies for a pilot phone-number protection service and assigned them dedicated numbers beginning with 700, according to IT Home’s November 12, 2026 report, which cites CCTV News.
The service uses temporary, 15-digit intermediary numbers. If a customer selects number protection when placing a food-delivery or ride-hailing order, the customer and the courier or driver can contact each other without seeing each other’s real mobile numbers. Call displays and a voice announcement before connection may provide information about the call’s purpose and the platform involved. The temporary number expires some time after the order ends.
CCTV News also outlined precautions for other number prefixes:
- 400: These are generally business customer-service numbers used to receive calls. An incoming call displaying 400 may be spoofed, so CCTV advises against answering it.
- 00 or +: These indicate an international call entering China’s network. CCTV says people without contacts overseas should be particularly wary of such calls.
- 95: Five- or six-digit numbers can be legitimate customer-service lines. CCTV advises avoiding calls from 95-prefix numbers longer than six digits; the prefix alone does not make every call suspicious.
- 1069: These numbers are used by third-party text-messaging platforms, but some have been misused by fraudsters. Treat links in 1069-prefix messages cautiously and do not reply without checking the message’s legitimacy.
A displayed prefix is not, by itself, proof of who is calling or whether a message is safe.
Source: ithome.com (originally published 2026-11-12 10:05 UTC+8)