➡ Many people feel pressured to use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for personal or professional reasons, despite concerns about privacy. While it’s difficult to maintain privacy on these platforms, it’s not impossible with careful use and understanding of the risks. However, some platforms, like Facebook, are considered too risky to use at all. The key to using platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram safely is to isolate them from each other and from any Facebook account, ensuring that identifiers like phone numbers, email addresses, and IP addresses are unique and can’t be matched to other information.
➡ To maintain privacy on social media platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram, create a new account with a unique name, phone number, and email. Protect your IP address using a VPN or by not using your home Wi-Fi. Avoid posting personal photos and limit interactions on these platforms. Consider using device or browser isolation, where you use a separate device or browser for these platforms and nothing else. Also, avoid using your real name on social media to keep your identity hidden.
➡ Braxme is a platform that offers privacy-focused products like an email service that doesn’t share metadata and unlimited aliases, and tools to protect your IP address like BICE VPN and Brax router. It’s also a social media site with over 100,000 users where you can discuss privacy issues without revealing your identity. The store is accessible once you sign in.

Most people think I’m an absolutist. When friends, family, schools, work, and churches say they can only be reached via some particular social media, usually Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp, my response, at least for myself, will be to say, Zuck those people! I’ll never be on any meta-platform. However, I realize that some people want to retain some semblance of privacy, but may still want access to these meta-platforms because they want to stay in touch with particular people. And some are forced to because of business or job reasons. The truth is, with work, there is a way to utilize meta-platforms without giving up your privacy completely, but it requires a commitment.

You need to fully understand the risks of this move and that there are limits to what you can do on these platforms in order to avoid being zucked. Often, there is heavy peer pressure in certain communities or a big chunk use a particular platform. As an example, WhatsApp dominates communications in India, Brazil, and some places in the EU to the point that you are expected to be on it. Similarly, some privacy-dumb companies choose to hire only via LinkedIn. And if you’re looking for a job in that company, then you are out of luck if you choose to be against self-doxing via LinkedIn.

Now, for the big chunk of my followers, I’d say follow your instinct and resist. This is one of those slippery slope decisions that can totally break you and when it happens, it is irreversible. But there’s also a big chunk of you, maybe potential followers, who are on the fence. You’re hearing a bit about what I’m saying, but you think I’m not practical. Well, today we’ll deal with the practicality. If there’s a need to go to certain social media that I would consider most dangerous to privacy, like all of meta and LinkedIn, I’m going to go on a deep dive to explore the actual dangers and tell you how to maneuver around them.

So real techniques and not easy. I want to make that clear now. Just don’t abuse the system I will provide you because if you screw up, you will ruin your privacy forever. Now, for the rest of you not interested in meta, watch it anyway because you will learn just how zucked up meta is. Stay right there. I am not an absolutist for sure. And in the past, I had test accounts and platforms like Facebook, Tech Talk and others, so I could study what these platforms are doing. Obviously, I can do this without fear and I know how to do it safely, but most of you don’t and you take the easy route and just install the offending app on your phone and call it a day.

You think, of course, that there’s no effect. So first, before we get into the practical approaches to being on some of these social media platforms, let’s analyze the actual dangers. Some platforms, by the way, are impossible to make safe. The primary one that I will never recommend you use is Facebook. Anything else but this. I don’t even test on Facebook anymore as it is too dangerous, but let’s see what we can do outside of Facebook. Let’s first start our analysis of the privacy dangers by looking at meta. Meta, of course, is Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

The problem with this zucking company is that Zuck made a point of deciding that privacy is not something you all deserve. Zuck personally deserves privacy since he puts tape on his computer’s camera, but apparently thinks that doesn’t apply to any of you and he doesn’t hide this. All you need to do is read the privacy policies in terms of service of all the meta platforms and they tell you precisely what they do. This includes uploading contact lists daily, tracking MAC addresses, tracking locations. And this is the worst part. Meta has the ability, through tech I explained in other videos, to observe what you do on the internet, even outside of meta.

The only other company that can do this is Google. On top of this external spying is the massive amount of deeply personal information that’s kept forever in the meta databases where your identity is guaranteed and crowdsourced and where your identity is matched when you use Instagram and WhatsApp. There’s absolutely no privacy if you are on Facebook. I don’t care if you say you don’t use it. I don’t believe you. If you have an account, every click, every friend, every opinion is known, especially with access to your external internet activity. This extremely deep knowledge of you with your actual real identity is what makes meta unique.

By the way, LinkedIn has a similar deep knowledge of you in a work environment. Real identity sites are the worst invasions of privacy there can be. In contrast, platforms like TikTok or X or even YouTube could be rained in with proper controls and not be dangerous. And the reason really is a term I already mentioned and that is identity. Google is extremely good at tracking your actions in the internet using the Google ID, but there are ways around that like using the Google phones you will find in our store. You can even use sites like YouTube without logging in.

In contrast, though, there is no way in to meta without a full commitment to giving up an identity. Now, you might say that Instagram and WhatsApp do not require a real name and that is correct. But what meta banks on is that you have a Facebook account and the three platforms share their tracking so that you end up being fully identified. This identification is reinforced by the crowdsource interactions that tag you as a friend, a classmate, a workmate or a relative. The tracking extends to hardware, including a MAC address and device identifiers.

They even track other people on your local area network and anyone who’s near you. And once you are linked on Facebook, then there are no secrets any longer. Here’s the irony. There would absolutely be no secret to who you are talking to on WhatsApp. I thought the purpose of WhatsApp was private communications, but in truth, there is really zero privacy. The metadata of who you’re talking to, your real name, your relationships, your connections, your locations are all pretty much known in WhatsApp. Worse yet, what you’re talking about will be obvious based on what they know about you in Facebook or on external Internet traffic.

In case you forgot the story, I will remind you that in 2016 or late 2015, Cambridge Analytica got a hold of the Facebook data of 50 million Americans, which were then being used to test approaches to influence elections. I won’t overstate this since I assume you know the dangers of your data being in the control of someone in power. But the question remains that there is peer pressure and you want a solution in spite of these risks. In colleges, dorm communications are often just limited to Facebook and Instagram. In India, even work communications are done via WhatsApp.

The main problem, especially if you’re young, is that you feel left out. You do not get invited to parties and your social life will be impacted if you’re not on the popular platforms. You stand out as being weird all because you understand privacy dangers. I just want to make sure I’m clear on this. I’ve never given in. I do not go on any social media that requires a real identity and I do not care what others think. The result, my entire family is now forced to talk to me on Signal. And of course, there’s still the usual text and phone calling, though to be honest, even that has moved to Signal.

Now, that’s pretty amazing and I didn’t even cause this. It’s just that the push to move to a particular platform is destroyed when one important person is not on it. In my case, my siblings cannot communicate as a family if I’m not in the conversation. So my Facebook-loving family actually all moved to Signal on their own. Resisting does work if you’re patient. But maybe try to convince one other important member of your friends or family. But where this does not happen, let me now give you techniques for using WhatsApp and Instagram safely. The key to using WhatsApp and Instagram safely is by isolating them so they do not connect to each other or to a Facebook account.

I’m telling you right now that Meta doesn’t like what I’m going to talk about. I was asking questions about how to do this using the AI Meta Llama 3.1 model and it refused to answer saying it will not go against the Meta in terms of service. Ah, so even Llama 3.1 model has privacy invasion baked in. Got it? You have to understand what identifiers are used to determine your identity on Meta. If you make sure these identifiers are unique and cannot match anything else, then you will be safe. The identifiers you have to be aware of are 2FA to factor authentication phone numbers, email addresses, IP address, location, MAC address, and device ID.

On a phone, there are many additional identifiers as well as cookies that can be stored on the device by Meta and can be used to track you. So this is not going to be simple. Meta is the most intense at breaking your privacy. So you have to be intense in your pushback. Let’s just use WhatsApp as our target here. This could also be Instagram. So just imagine what would fit you. First, you need to establish a completely new account. You need to not use old accounts and delete any old accounts as the connection between accounts will be noted and this will fail.

You must delete your Facebook account as that is now tainted and is tied to everything else. That must disappear. I don’t really have a good solution for ever allowing Facebook with privacy in mind. So just consider it gone. The new WhatsApp account must not use your same name on other social media. Then the new WhatsApp account must have a new phone number, a new email address, and you must always protect your IP address. Now, there are many ways to do this even for free. A VPN would be the best choice. Otherwise, using anything else other than your own home Wi-Fi would be an alternate option.

Even your profile photo should not be your actual face. Pull some photo from the internet. Hold on though. Let’s not get off track. If you’re going to be posting selfie pictures on Instagram instead of just reading posts, then this entire discussion will be useless. Now, this is not an easy matter just with these details I just gave you because these credentials can never be reused in meta. This is not simple. First, you need a new phone number. This number must not exist in your friend’s contact list. Remember, Facebook uploads contact lists of all its users daily.

If your phone number is on someone’s contact list, yield will be matched. This is the most critical since meta uses the 2FA phone number as the primary identification. Check out our Brax virtual phone solution so you can reorganize your phone numbers with additional phone numbers without needing additional SIM cards. Next, you need to use a unique email. This is easy. Many email products allow aliases. Our Brax mail product allows unlimited aliases so you can just make up an alias immediately that would be unique to this platform. Next, you make sure you protect your IP address.

Now, if you’ve had prior meta apps before you start this, you need to take another extra precaution. Do a factory reset unless this is a new device. This is important, folks. If you do this willy-nilly, the little cookie trays or even the old notification ID on your phone will reveal to Zuck that you’re trying to Zuck him and he will stop you. But if it’s a brand new phone that’s never logged into meta, then you can skip this step. This procedure is easier when just dealing with WhatsApp. However, this becomes harder when you combine WhatsApp with Instagram.

The problem is that often on Instagram people will post selfies which will track locations, do facial recognition, and even track the other people in the photos and connect you on Facebook. It’s really hard to do this if you involve Instagram. So my recommendation is that you absolutely limit your interactions on Instagram. Usually the purpose is to access announcements from groups you belong to, for example. That is definitely not a problem. But once you start doing personal interactions on the app, then, of course, you can assume that your unique identity is being created.

At least without a Facebook account, this limits the risk since they would still not have your real name, assuming you did what I said before on things like the phone number and email. But I want you to understand the devilish methods of meta. Once you sign into WhatsApp and Instagram, then from that moment on all your internet activities will be tracked outside of those platforms if you don’t do anything. The easiest and safest answer is to have a dedicated phone for use with meta and do nothing else on that phone. I call this device isolation.

Understand that if you put WhatsApp and Instagram on the same phone that they will be connected. There’s no doubt about that, so if you’re going to do this, you might as well use the same phone number and email for both. The alternate way is to use a computer instead of a phone and use an isolated browser for meta. It must not be the default browser. Do not use this particular browser for anything else. You could combine Google and meta together in one browser like Chrome and the two spyware platforms can have added there.

But you must not, I repeat, must not do any other activities on this browser that doesn’t relate to Google or meta. This technique is what I call browser isolation. By the way, there are computer versions of WhatsApp, so that would be a lot safer than a phone app if you don’t want to use a separate device. Remember folks, old phones are easy to get. You may have a stack of them already. This device isolation does not need a SIM card. You can just use this extra phone and piggyback on the hotspot of your main phone.

I know all this sounds terribly complicated, but unfortunately, meta is the most extreme platform when it comes to attempting to discover your identity. This is why I don’t choose to even do these tricks. I just stay away. As you can see, there’s a lot to do and it’s often not worth it, but I’m giving you the option since there are valid use cases for it. For example, some kinds of businesses need access to all social media to promote themselves like real estate agents, small businesses selling products, restaurants, and so on.

None of these cases that I described include the need to publicly post personal data. So just understand where I stand here. If you start posting personal data, then you are sucking yourself and this guidance is going to be useless. Now at LinkedIn, you control how much information you post on there. While LinkedIn doesn’t track you all over the Internet and have the same level of danger, what it does is create a public profile of you which anyone can look up. This is useful in businesses, especially if you’re open to getting a new job.

This is where LinkedIn is useful to you. But I just want you to be aware that your name on LinkedIn will be searched on social aggregation sites like Spokio, Intellis, People Finder, and so on. And if you did not hide your data by being privacy aware, then everything will be collected by external parties and sold. If you can’t stop being on LinkedIn, then it becomes more important that you lock down your personal presence on other social media. This way, you partition your private data from your business life. Now having discussed this really difficult procedure of being on sucking better, I don’t really understand what the difficulty is when they’re still texting, phones, and email as communications options.

Just understand the difference though. Texting or SMS and phone calls are of course heavily surveilled by the government and carriers. There’s a copy of every SMS ever sent in some carrier in various government three-letter agency databases. However, faced with the dangers of social media, if I were being forced on WhatsApp, I’ll just accept messages on text and be very limited and controlled in whatever I do. SMS is still good for useless talk like, are you there yet? Or buy some soap? Are you coming to the party? SMS is not good for talking about your employer, your personal life, or deep talks with your girlfriend or boyfriend.

But it’s an option. If you use the Brax virtual phone, at least you can have a phone number with no KYC. In other words, a no identity phone number. So even if someone read your text, they wouldn’t know who you are. This is definitely still an option and you can offer parties that force you to be on some other social media platform and easy phone number. Surely, this is better than just giving in. By the way, email is equally surveilled. Assume all emails are always read by someone, including three-letter agencies. At least you get a semblance of privacy if you use some identity-free email like the Brax mail we have on our store.

Again, I wouldn’t talk about anything important on emails. Now, my final point, which should have been obvious, but maybe not, do not use your real name in social media. Imagine all this work and then you sign up to Instagram and WhatsApp with your real name. That’s the whole point of this. Obscure your identity because without an identity, the data collected on you will be thrown out. It won’t be useful. By the way, did you see the thing here? It’s a relic from the past. I don’t do that anymore, but it’s interesting. Folks, many of the tools I described that are used for privacy protection are solutions I built myself for the use of my followers.

One of the products I created is the Brax virtual phone. This allows you to segregate your phone numbers so they don’t all show up in contact lists. A Brax virtual phone number requires no SIM card or even a mobile phone. Another important product in the privacy battle is our Brax mail service, which gives you an identity-free email address, one that does not give out metadata. It also has unlimited aliases so you can give different email addresses to each social media platform to isolate their tracking. Next, we have products that are for protecting your IP address.

You should always use a VPN on your home network and we have the BICE VPN and Brax router products you can use for that. All these are on my platform, Braxme. Braxme has over 100,000 users and it’s really a social media site that requires no identity and people there talk daily about privacy issues. Join me there and support what we do. The store is on the platform when you sign in. Thank you for watching and see you next time. [tr:trw].

See more of Rob Braxman Tech on their Public Channel and the MPN Rob Braxman Tech channel.