Burner, a newly released iPhone app, gives your iPhone an alternate, temporary phone number, which you can use for a brief period of time and then dispose off.

The app is primarily meant for creating a private line for communication for voice call and texts.

The app’s description on the App Store:

Burner is a privacy layer for your phone, providing alias phone numbers at the push of a button.

Fast, safe, and totally private – get Burner numbers as often as you need them, and get as many as you want.

Give out Burner numbers, and make and get voice calls and SMS texts, just like any other phone number. Keep them for a month, or longer. Burn them when you’re done.

Perfect for dating, job searches, short-term projects, craigslist transactions, Twitter, Tumblr, and other social media, and for whenever else you want to be in touch and want to keep it on a private line, or don’t want to give out your real number.

The app costs $1.99 on the App Store and comes with enough preloaded credit to try the service. After that’s used up you can buy more credits using In-App Purchases. The cheapest burner line you can buy is the mini-burner, which gives you a phone number that lasts for 20 minutes of voice and 60 texts, or 7 days, whichever’s earlier.

You can of course burn the number before it expires, erasing with it your association with the phone line. If someone ever calls on a discarded number, an out-of-service message will be played.

The app works only in US and Canada, and isn’t available for the iPod touch or iPad.

Here’s a video demo of the app:

You can buy the app from the App Store for $1.99.