How to activate or deactivate private number on the Safaricom network

Have you ever wanted to hide your caller id so the recipient of your call wouldn’t be able to tell who’s calling? Well, there’s actually a very simple USSD based way to do so on the Safaricom network. The feature is almost present to all handsets but in some cases hidden within the phone’s settings therefore this USSD option offers an ample way for those he’d rather not fiddle with their device’s settings.

Using a USSD option, you can choose to either hide your phone number to a specific contact of apply to all calls originating from your Safaricom line. The reasons why someone would actually want to initiate a call unanimously is beyond my understanding cause personally I wouldn’t accept such a call, but this feature is available just in case you need it and of course I must stress (you need it to legally hide your identity).

How to deactivate caller ID for a specific contact

Hide your identity to specific contacts by following below steps;

• On your Safaricom phone’s dial pad, dial #31# followed by the phone number you intent to call without revealing your identity
• An example to hide you caller ID from 0722000000 would be #31#0722000000
• Then initiate the call

How to deactivate your caller ID from all outgoing calls

The difference from the above example is, you’ll be hiding your caller ID from all outgoing calls

• On your phone’s dial pad, just key in *31#
• You should receive a subsequent notification that caller ID option has been enabled on your phone

How to deactivate private number on your phone

If you had enabled the “hide caller ID” feature but no longer want to use it, the process is a bit longer and will require users to head over into their caller settings. If you have an android phone, follow below steps

• Open the phone’s dialer app and tap on the three dots at the top to open settings
• Head over to “Calls” followed by “GSM Call Settings”
• Under GSM settings, tap “Additional settings”
• You should then see “Caller ID”
• You can select Network Default, hide number or Show number
• The settings can vary depending on your phone’s android version