Years ago, back when I worked for a private consulting firm, I only carried a company-issued cell phone.
I then went to work for a public agency. Right around the time I got the job a decade or so ago (back when people were still paying for minutes on a cell phone plan), there was a minor scandal when the local newspaper reported on state agency employees using their government-issued phones after hours and on weekends at taxpayer expense. The affected employees got disciplined, some rather severely. To avoid the issue, I decided to get a personal cell phone that was separate from my work cell phone.
In the years since, I discovered that as a public agency, we are subject to FOIA requests. We are also frequently involved in lawsuits with discovery demands for all of our relevant records, including emails, text messages, and photos. I’m glad that I kept my work life and personal life separate, as I don’t want some lawyer sifting through my personal emails, text messages, and photos if I only had one phone.
I used to carry two different phones and switched to a single phone a couple of years ago. I love only having to tote a single phone now. With me being in public safety, the only caveat would be that my work phone is susceptible to subpoena. It’s only happened a couple of times in my twenty years, but it can happen. When you have a single phone and two numbers, the investigators have access to both work and private information/text’s/photos etc. As I told my boss, if the investigator wants to look at all of the “I’m at the store do you need anything?” texts between me and my wife or the “Did you finish your homework?” texts between me and my daughter, then have at it.
(To answer the possible question as to why my phone could get subpoenaed…
If our main phone lines go down, I have been known to grab my cell and make work related calls from it. Since our main phones have a caller ID that tell you it’s the “Police” calling, I have used my phone to call suicidal people back to see if they would answer. Both times they have had to look at my phone it was because of suicidal people answering my cell phone call. They subpoena my phone and pull the call logs off to show in the report that we talked for X minutes.)
This. I’m not exactly a smartphone power user - I’ve had mine for less than a year, and I still use it in very basic ways. But if someone’s on my contact list, the phone tells me who the call* is from.
It’s not like a 1960s-vintage home phone where you didn’t know who was calling until you answered the phone.
To the extent that I get calls on it! Like with most people these days, phone calls seem to be well down the list of things I use my smartphone for.