The questions people actually ask, with the limits left in.

One quote form is usually not one company. Most comparison forms sell the enquiry on to a panel of agencies, and each of those may pass it on again, so a single submission can reach a dozen callers inside a day or two.

Nothing was breached and nobody sold your number in the criminal sense. You handed it to a form whose terms allowed exactly this. Doorman does not undo that, and no app can — once a number is out, it is out. What it changes is what happens when they ring.

Loan and mortgage enquiries generate what the industry calls a trigger lead. The enquiry itself is the signal — that you are shopping, right now — and it is worth money, so it is sold. The calls often start within a day, sometimes before the lender you actually applied to has got back to you.

Which is the awkward part: the one call you want is mixed in with the thirty you don't, and it is coming from a number you have never saved either. That is the case Doorman is built for. Everything unknown is held quietly and listed with its reason, so the one you were waiting for is findable instead of buried. How that works.

This is the reason Doorman keeps a log instead of a filter. Anything that is not a saved contact is held without a sound, and every held call appears with the number, the time and the rule that decided it. You skim, you find the quote you wanted, you clear the rest.

If you know a call is coming you can also add the number before it rings, so it comes straight through. Most apps here make you get bothered once and block them afterwards, which is a strange way round.

Codes come from five-digit short codes, and nobody has a short code saved as a contact, so a shut door holds them like anything else.

The answer is the code window: one tap opens messages to every sender for ten minutes, then it shuts itself whether you remember to or not. Doorman does not sort messages by what they say, so it does not try to tell a bank code from any other text — which is exactly why this is a timer you open rather than something clever we claim to detect. It is friction, chosen over leaving the door open to everyone permanently.

One thing worth knowing, because we measured it rather than assumed it: from Android 15 the system hides the contents of a message it believes holds a one-time code, from every app that is not a paired watch. The message still reaches you and your messaging app still shows it. What changes is that Doorman cannot, so the code will never appear in your door log or your summary — only the fact that something arrived.

Not from inside Doorman, and this one is a platform limit rather than a feature we have not got to yet. Android only lets the app that owns a notification channel exempt itself from Do Not Disturb, so per-app exceptions live in Android's own settings.

Doorman can take you straight to that screen and nothing more. We would rather say that than imply the switch is ours.

Probably, and that is not ours to promise either way. Android lets a screening app silence a call or decline it. A silenced call still rings out at the other end, and what happens after that is your carrier's forwarding behaviour.

There is a second cost worth knowing before you install anything. Taking the screening role takes it away from whatever your phone or carrier was doing before. On our own test handset that moved roughly two and a half calls a day out of the blocked column and into the missed one. The phone got quieter; the mailbox did not. The Live Line exists because of this.

Only to show one to you. When you open a held text to read it or reply, Doorman reads the words from the notification, in memory, on the phone. It never stores that text, never writes it to the log and never sends it anywhere. The log keeps who knocked and when.

It holds no SMS permission. What it has is notification access, which you grant in Android's settings and can take back there.

On your phone, if you keep it at all. When "Keep the audio of messages" is on, each recording is downloaded to your phone once, and the moment your phone confirms it has the copy, the recording is deleted at the telephone provider. Our servers never store message audio; they pass it through. Playback works in airplane mode, because the file is simply there.

Turn on on‑phone transcription and the phone writes the words out itself — the transcript lights up word by word as the message plays, and tapping a word replays from it. The one-time ~40 MB model download is the only network this feature ever touches; your messages never leave the phone.

Only while you hold the microphone button in Ask Doorman. Your words are recognised on the phone, and only the text is sent, never the audio. Type instead and the permission is never asked for.

A way to change how your Live Line behaves in plain words — “only let approved callers ring”. The text goes to Doorman's hosted assistant, which proposes a change. Nothing changes until you confirm.

Sensitive changes, like closing the line or lifting a block, need your screen lock or fingerprint as well. Every change can be undone. What is sent, and how long it is kept.

No. By the time a notification reaches Doorman, Android has already swapped in the contact's name if it knows one. A name means someone you know, a bare number means a stranger, and that is the whole test. It needs your address book about as much as a doorbell does.

No. A held text keeps its place in your notification shade and a held call still turns up in your call log. There is no code path in the app that can suppress either one, and a test fails the build if somebody adds one.

This is the complaint that dominates the reviews of every competitor we read: people who missed something and found out days later, with no record of what happened. Why we built it this way.

No, and the difference is the product. A spam blocker keeps a database of numbers other people reported, and decides on your behalf whether a caller is bad.

Doorman holds no such database and never labels a caller. It applies rules you set — saved contact or not, on your list or not, expected before a date or not — and then shows you everything it did, with the reason. An unauthorised caller is unauthorised, which is a statement about your list, not an accusation about them.

Nothing is for sale yet. Doorman is in a private pilot, and this is how it will work at launch.

Screening calls to your own number is free, permanently. The Door — texts, app notifications and the log — will be $9.99 once, after fourteen days free. It runs on your phone and costs us nothing per month, so charging you monthly would be charging you for nothing.

The Live Line, a number Doorman answers on your behalf, is invite only today. It will be a subscription, because a real phone number is rented every month. Pricing at launch; founding members keep the price they join at. The full breakdown.

Today nobody pays; nothing is for sale. At launch: the door opens. You get the ordinary phone back. We are not going to hold your texts hostage to make you pay, and screening stays free regardless.

If a Live Line subscription lapses, the line still answers and takes messages, but it puts nobody through to you.

We have tested it on T-Mobile in the United States. The line depends on your carrier forwarding the calls you decline or miss, and other carriers are unproven until we have tried each one on a real line.

Both. A home-screen widget shows and changes the Live Line's mode: Silent, Approved, Urgent or Closed.

A Wear OS companion app shows the door and recent knocks, sets the mode, and takes Ask Doorman from your wrist. It needs your phone; it does not work on its own.

Not yet. Doorman is Android first because the two mechanisms it stands on — a call screening role, and a Do Not Disturb rule an app can own — are available to third-party apps on Android and are not available on iOS in the same shape.

We would rather ship one platform properly than two badly.