I Solved the Phone Number Privacy Problem! | Rob Braxman
Summary
Transcript
There’s a very basic privacy threat that’s been very hard to solve. I discussed it in my viral video. You do not want to be on this list. It’s basically the threat of two FA phone numbers and contact lists that contain those phone numbers. And frankly, my solution discussed in that video was vague because there’s a hole in what we can do today. Just in general, what I’m talking about is the threat of phone numbers.
We give out our phone numbers constantly for voice calls and texting, but with it, we also hand our identity. The phone number is our new id card. You could have a super secret conversation on signal, but if your contact info is based on a phone number, then knowing that phone number clearly ties to you. Big tech companies import contact lists from their users, and then they have a big giant directory of phone numbers, names, addresses, and email, including a relationship map showing how everyone is connected.
What if you can hide your phone number from big tech and strangers and not show who it belongs to? It took me a while, but I finally came up with a solution. This is the solution that I would personally use. If you’re interested in knowing how you can hide your phone numbers, then stay right there. While endtoid encryption solutions are found everywhere, the main flaw in the privacy realm is really the phone number.
Anytime you reveal your phone number, you put your privacy at risk. Let’s just use a simple day to day example. You’re a woman and you go use the dating app Tinder for coordinating your date. You may need to hand a phone number, but if you give out your normal phone number, then you’ve just put yourself at risk with someone you don’t know. It’s the same thing with social media.
You sign up on Instagram and it asks you for your two FA phone number. You give them your normal phone number and voila. They know your every contact, your real name, and basically they innocently act like it’s all organic and that real people you know get recommended as friends. Every privacy respecting individual has been trying to find a way to achieve privacy with their phone numbers. If you sign up with T Mobile for a normal phone line, maybe a second phone line for private use, their KYc or know your customer requirements means they check your identification card and then your real name is plastered as your caller Id.
In fact, if big tech sends you a text for two FA, they can just query the caller Id and get your sucking name. So even getting additional sim cards are not the best solution because of this. And you have the limitation that here in the US most phones are single sim. Some think that burner phones are some solution. Well, burner phones are typically Google Androids. Also it gets expensive.
I’m telling you this long journey because I went through all of this questioning solutions. The solution I’ve been using a while is to have a second phone with an extra phone number. It is not a perfect solution because it is a Google Android and Google can see the phone number on it and can query the caller id. But it is better than nothing because a new two FA focused phone number is not going to show up on a contact list.
Even here though Google could add you to their internal contact list if they discover it from a standard phone. The older solution I was using, which frankly had limited application, was to use Google Voice. Practically speaking, this seemed a great alternative. You can give out your Google voice number to people you don’t really know. They can put this number on their contact list and it won’t matter, even though it means it will leak out to all of big tech.
But the Google voice number forwards your calls and texts to your real phone number problem. Google of course, will not take Google voice for two FA because it’s their number. Google also knows your forwarding number now, and this will be your new two FA number which they keep in their database to match to their Google id. And if they know the real person attached to the Google ID, then they know everything you do on the zucking Internet.
Just to give you a running tab here, let me tell you how much these solutions would cost. In the case of Google Voice, it is completely free but useless for two fa, so it has limited application, maybe for your Tinder dates. And the unmeasured cost is the loss of privacy to Google. The next solution is to get another SIM card and another phone. Ryan Reynolds says you can get mint for $15 a month.
That’s $180 a year maybe, plus taxes. I also researched using the big voiced over IP players where you could get a VoIP subscription. The companies include Nextiva, RingCentral, OpenPhone, Vonage, Uma, and even apps like Viber. The app versions have so many limitations to real use. Some even save costs by actually forwarding your calls via your normal cell service. So there goes your privacy. The clean solutions like Nextiva and RingCentral advertise rates around $20 a month, but when you actually dig deep into their charges, it’s more like $35 a month.
Now we’re getting close to $500 a year to even have some partially private solution. The reason these rates are so high is because each plan assumes unlimited calls and texts, they’re really made for business use. So to accommodate the cost of unlimited use, they are priced so high. There are some other apps that offer complicated solutions like XMPP based ones or others that require you to identify yourselves to Google with your Google ID via the Google Store with in app purchases.
So I won’t even talk about those. I just want to make sure you understand my search process. It was not easy to find an answer. Okay, let’s talk about the solution I created. And yes, to make it clear, I couldn’t find a solution, so I made one. Fortunately, I’m a software developer so I have the ability to create my own solutions rather than just search for one. What I came up with is to offer my own VoIP service and to offer it at a cheap price so everyone can use it.
So now I became my own phone company. The primary use case of this voiceover IP service is to give you a phone number that can use for two factor authentication. It will be a number not known to anyone else. It is not known to Google, so it cannot be matched to a Google ID. If someone queries the caller ID of this phone number, it will not identify you as it just shows the area assigned to the prefix of the number.
It’s a service where your name or email is not attached to the phone number. On registration. I don’t ask you so you don’t tell. And for the case of making your identity disappear, when you give out a two FA phone number, this number can be changed. How do you use it? For the simplest kind of use, you can forward calls and text to your real number, or you can forward text to email.
This means you do not need to install any other kind of software for two Fa. If you want full access to the phone and text, you will need to use a sip app of some sort on your computer or your phone. I will discuss those options later. Again, that’s mostly an advanced use. For normal people, forwarding is all you need. Now because of the limited use this is intended for, primarily to hide identity from big tech and social media.
It is not expected to be used for high volume and this is the basis of this solution. Low cost. Basically an extra phone line for $5 a month, paid annually. This is $60. That’s it. You can subscribe to this service for $60 a year and you can have a separate number to use for two FA or to hand to strangers. And I validate the numbers with the carriers using my id and my name, not yours I do not ask for any kind of identification to do this, so I’m the privacy firewall.
I know this solution will be practical and least costly because I’ve told you about my heavy research over the years looking for a solution. I didn’t realize that in order to solve this problem, I have to turn myself into a phone company like Ryan Reynolds pushing mint mobile. This service is called Brax VoIP soft phone and it’s going to be available hopefully starting on March 1. At least that’s a plan since this video is released ahead of time.
After purchasing the service, you can provision your phone number and configure your service on the Braxme app and then you start getting the forwarded calls and emails and text again. This is made for a privacy purpose and not as a heavily used phone. So this service gives you free 1000 minutes and 1000 texts for the year. I can offer additional plans with higher levels of use later on, but this will be the cheap solution.
Now, there are additional questions that some people have asked me about this and I will try to answer it. Number one, isn’t forwarding to my regular number ruining my privacy? Forwarding is an option. It is true that carriers can search phone records and track who’s calling whom and who’s sending text to whom. But this is not related to a contactless threat. The carrier is not the two fa threat, it is big tech.
Google, for example, has no access to carrier records. All they can do is query the caller id and search their contact list. It’s a new number so it will not be in their contact list database. They cannot see who it is forwarded to. In the Google voice case, you are telling them who it is forwarded to since there basically Google becomes a phone carrier. If you want this as a security tool and you want more privacy even from carriers, then you can forward text to email as long as the email has no identity information on it and no IP address and you probably will not forward voice calls.
Again, this is not intended to be used to hide from the government. If you’re a targeted individual, not a market I’m interested in. This is a service for normal people. This is mainly for privacy from mass surveillance and big tech databasing and profiling. For this type of application, forwarding is not a risk factor at all. You can use this service without any kind of forwarding as long as you use a SiP app or a SIP appliance.
We’ll get to what that is in the next set of questions. Number two, what software do I need to install to run this, the service is activated on the Braxme website or app. Other than that, if you are going to use it primarily with forwarding, then it is really a fire and forget approach. You get calls and texts on your normal phone line, but this precludes you from initiating a call or text to reply, not initiative for two Fau.
Since two FA is a one way deal, they send you a code and you enter it on their app or website. To use this as a normal phone line requires you to install a SIP app. Basically you enter the SIP credentials in the SIP app and it connects to the servers and you’re now acting like a landline. There are many SIP apps, but the ones I’ve been personally using are called Micro SiP on Windows and bare SIP plus on phones.
Another that works on all platforms is Linphone. Anyway, I’m sure others will suggest other apps, but again to repeat, for most uses, which is two factor authentication, you will not need to install or set up anything. Enter your forwarding information and you’re done. Number three, can I use this service with a hardware phone like a landline? Yes, this is a general voiceover IP solution, so it will work with any device that can take SIP credentials.
So in essence you can set up the equivalent of a landline to receive calls. Being an IP based device, you could even route that IP phone through a VPN router and get even IP protection. This makes it more physically convenient. Number four, do you offer services like voicemail and 911 calling? These are currently not yet activated on the service, but will be enabled in the future. Having voicemail would be good for privacy since it eliminates the need for forwarding calls.
Number five, will you offer other plans that include a higher level of service? Yes. Basically this turns my company into a phone company like an MVNo, except we don’t give out SIM cards so we have the same capabilities as a normal carrier. However, my focus currently is to solve the problem with this underserved population, which is the privacy conscious individual. Number six, where is the service offered? Starting on March 1, hopefully this service will have the ability to serve us phone numbers.
Shortly after, we can serve canadian phone numbers. Anyone can sign up to the service from anywhere. However, this gives you only us and canadian phone numbers. Also, currently international calling is disabled. The phone numbers given can call out only locally. Again, our focus here is to solve a specific problem and this iteration is not designed to provide a regular home phone service. I think those are the main questions.
I can respond to more questions on the live stream on Rumble. Also, you can ask questions on Braxme. Something that you have to think about here is that I’ve created a suite of products that are all interrelated. I created Brax Mail, BytesVPN, Brax Router, and Brax two phones. These products integrate nicely because they really solve the entire privacy problem in a big way. I’m really glad that I don’t have to just talk about how our privacy is constantly being invaded.
I continue to come up with solutions. I think Brac’s VoIP softphone is a huge solution. Thank you for watching and next. See you next time. .
See more of Rob Braxman Tech on their Public Channel and the MPN Rob Braxman Tech channel.
