Summary
Transcript
As many of you regulars already know, I read all your comments and respond to almost all of them. If there’s a question, and I learn a lot about what you’re all thinking just from these comments. This is what I learned from reading these on the last video. The common reaction to my last video on how Google tracks every single click was just that had mortified most of you.
And I saw so many comments about just leave the Internet, just stop using smartphones, stop using social media, we’re doomed. And so on. I did get into potential solutions later on, but maybe these people just tuned out by then by all the perceived negativity and hopelessness. Let’s be clear, I obviously use Google. I’m here on YouTube, though it is incorrect to say I’m just tied to YouTube. I have, as of right now, around 140,000 followers on other platforms, and some of you are watching me on those other platforms.
But I’m not afraid of Google. The purpose of these videos is to reveal the tech mechanisms used so we can overcome them. If we can’t overcome these privacy challenges, then I need to pack up and give up. But fortunately, we have solutions. Google’s model is based on tracking the normie. If you behave like a normie, then you will be sucked and things will be pretty much hopeless for you privacy wise.
But if you actually understand the foundation of how Google works, then you can beat their technology. I understand this because I’m a deep level technologist. The reality is that we can coexist with Google in this tracking infested tech. If you know the weaknesses of their systems in this video, I will teach you real limitations to what Google can do, and this can then be used to our advantage to control what Google knows about us.
Stay right there. One person said in the comments that he has no time for long explanations about the why of things. Just tell him the solution. That’s not my style. Folks, I have realized that I cannot teach you properly unless I tell you what the actual threats are to your privacy very specifically. May not be exciting for the Nontechis, but it’s been the unique style of this channel since day one, and the purpose of teaching you in detail is to arm yourselves with the knowledge to problem solve things yourself.
There’s so much disinformation on this topic on the Internet, and I have so many enemies, likely techies who work for these same tech companies or corporate cybersecurity people with completely different motives than I have. In general, I find that some techies arrive at incorrect solutions because they didn’t truly understand the real threat. Let’s go back to Google specifically and tell you what the Achilles heel is of the Google infrastructure.
Now, don’t just jump out of this video after I explain what this Achilles heel is, because it is not a simple thing to overcome this. It requires some really careful thinking and understanding of solutions that can work. The reality is that I’m personally not afraid of my activities being tracked by Google. In fact, I know that my actions on the Internet are constantly collected and recorded. It is a waste of effort to close the Internet barn doors after the horses are already out.
The fact of the matter is that on the Internet, this is pretty much impossible, since every action is recorded by somebody, whether it be Google, Facebook, or a government. But this doesn’t worry me. I’m not spending sleepless nights fretting over this. In fact, you should all know that hackers are very active all over the Internet. They don’t worry much either. They are busy disrupting these corporate behemoths, and obviously their actions are being tracked.
So this sounds all completely incongruous, right? I want you to learn something about these hackers, especially the state level players who really know what they’re doing, meaning government sponsored hackers. The name of the game is evading attribution. Let me repeat that so it sticks in your head. Attribution, a very important word. It is actually the pinnacle of all my solutions on privacy. Again, the task is to evade attribution.
Attribution in a hacking context is when the security researchers look for signs and patterns in an attack and determine that the attacker is actually some specific person or some specific government. In a social media context, attribution really means to assign some Internet action to a real person’s identity. Okay, I changed words on you. I started off with some vague word called attribution, and now I’ve introduced a new word, which is identity.
And this is really what the average person needs to concern himself about. I have to repeat this several times for this to sink in. Everything you do on the Internet is tracked. There is no question about this. This is how the Internet works. Just accept this. But this information about Internet actions has no value if the data cannot be attributed to a specific identity. In other words, the tracking party, Google in this case, has to know who did the action.
Otherwise, their computer systems don’t know where to file these pieces of information. I’ll give you a specific example. If you go to the Internet and search for certain diseases and how these can be treated, Google knows that, and certainly it can give you account of how many people searched about pancreatic cancer or hypertension or heart failure and so on. But the danger to privacy is when Google knows that Joe searched for pancreatic cancer, Letitia searched for hypertension, and Jerry searched for heart failure.
Without an identity attached to the activity, Google cannot hurt you. Google can affect Joe, Letitia, and Jerry here because it knows something very specific about them. That is the crux of the privacy problem. Don’t focus on the collection of data. Focus instead on the identity attached to that data. Or at least think of it as a pair. Data, identity. You can have data with no identity or identity with no data.
Either way, it works. I’ve tried to explain this in many videos, and I’ve had to restate this in a different way every year. Now from here, it gets more complex. We now understand that Google’s achilles heel is that for data to be valuable, there must be some identity attached to it. Many of you will leave the video now because you figured it out. You will come up with some half baked idea on how to hide your identity from Google and you’re good to go.
But that is also the problem. Google is very smart about finding your identity, and so we have to be equally smart in overcoming that. It’s not simple. This is why you need to pay attention to the details. This is also constantly evolving. A few years ago, Google was using different techniques than it is using today. By the way, I just want to make it clear that each of you individually isn’t important to Google.
I’m not important to Google. This is why I’m not afraid of Google. Google has a global view of the data landscape. If they’re able to collect information about the Internet actions in 90% of the cases using whatever techniques they have, then they’re good to go. As long as there are enough normies. They have the ability to make tons of money on that. They can fund their Google search, Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube with ads.
So it is a wasted effort to view this as some personal attack. Their computer systems will not waste time on you specifically. Now, the government might if you’re some targeted individual. But the reality is that Google is bent on profiting from normie behavior, meaning they are there to take advantage of the normie with nothing to hide. The rest of us, they won’t bother. And historically, this has been the case.
Let’s get specific now. The primary way Google collects information about individuals is via your logged in Google ID. I specifically discussed it in my last video as deterministic tracking they can attribute all your actions on the Internet if they know your Google ID. Please watch that video if you haven’t so far. So you have the theoretical framework to understand more of what I’m saying here. All other methods of tracking, such as IP address location, Mac address, IMEI, and so on, which many of you fear is called probabilistic tracking.
This is tracking based on a guess of attribution. Probabilistic is not exact, so its long term value is uncertain. But if they can keep records of your activities in the short term, you will likely make a mistake and reveal your Google ID. And then the probabilistic tracking becomes deterministic, meaning they can then associate a whole slew of activities to your real identity. But if they can’t do that, then that probabilistic data just fades away.
It has no long term value if it cannot be filed away under the data of a specific individual. So, given this understanding, if you’re still with me here, the general guide to a solution to privacy is to withhold the Google ID as much as possible from Google. I’m going to give you various scenarios so you can understand the concept here. Scenario number one, Chrome logged in. You’re on Chrome logged into Google.
You use YouTube, Google search and Gmail. Scenario number two, brave not logged in. You’re on brave. And you’re not logged into Google. You use YouTube and Google search. You cannot use Gmail since you’re not logged in. Scenario number three, normie phone logged in. You’re on a standard phone and the phone is logged into Google. Scenario number four, the Google phone no login. You’re on a special phone called ad Google phone.
Here it is clear that Google’s watching you on all the Google platforms. You are using Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive and so on. All your actions are associated with your Google id. Think about this. What if you never go to a non Google site on this browser? Well, what happens is that there’s no tracking history accumulated for non Google sites. Also, because you know someone is watching, you can feed the machine information you want.
This is an advanced technique. Want to search for contrary content and you will have Google classify you incorrectly. This, for example, could be opposite day with regards to politics, religion, gender and so on. This AI is very vulnerable to this. Next, what if you limited your activity on this browser to nonsense? Maybe this is only for watching dog videos and bathroom repair, things of no importance for profiling a belief, then expect that Google does not know what you believe in.
Now here’s a completely different environment, no Google id, so nothing you do will ever be associated with your identity. You can watch anything, search for anything, have any kind of opinion. While some tracking will occur, it will only be probabilistic tracking and short term it will not be a long term history. You can improve your privacy here by not using Google search, but even if you did, the effect is not permanent.
Now this is the most dangerous device actually, because not only are you logged in, but the OS can actually verify the device identifiers. This is something you need to understand, and it’s one of the newer techniques Google uses. So phones are a particularly difficult risk because if you log in once then the imEI of the device is associated with your google ID and it doesn’t matter if you log out.
It is always a deterministic tracking method. But I mentioned this in my other videos. I actually have a standard Google Android. I use it for two FA only and it is off 99. 9% of the time. I turn it on maybe four times a year. What does Google know about this particular device then? I don’t use any apps on it, it is mostly off. So here, if I can’t get rid of the identity, I solve it by removing that data.
When not in use, there is no data to capture. Now this is a special case based on technical details I explained in other videos. A phone running Android open source project or AOSP has no Google code in it at all. This phone does not log into Google ever and there is no Google id nor any software that talks to Google in the background. This is basically like the case of brave browser.
In scenario number two, you can do anything you want since it will never be associated with your Google ID, it is basically untrackable to Google. Google also cannot see the IMEI and other identifiers. There are technical explanations to why this is the case. Google can perform short term tracking using probabilistic methods, but no long term way to keep that data and assign it to an identity. Now each of these scenarios has little gotchas and some advanced complications.
But again, the most important thing is if there is any way to record your activity for the long term, you can be in all these four scenarios simultaneously. As long as you know you’re being watched in scenario number one and scenario number three, not a problem. It depends on what you’re doing. In these scenarios, a smart, privacy oriented person will use this knowledge to partition what they do.
The main threat is not to have a Google or other big tech platform get a profile on who you are exactly. Using a planned collection of devices and browsers, you can define what is known about you. The less they know about what you’re thinking, the less they’re able to manipulate you by changing your search content or basically changing your Internet. In the end, it’s all about influencing you, either to get you to buy stuff or to make you believe certain things which may or may not be true.
If you’re smart, you start thinking about how to confuse the machine. When the machine is confused, it cannot act against you. Don’t worry about fine details, look at the big picture. Forget that you’re being tracked everywhere. Just always be aware if they know who you really are. Now my many videos will go into many details about many other little things, but basically understanding what I say here is perhaps 80% off the battle.
If you want something for me to focus on, just let me know in the comments. Thank you. There are privacy solutions and that’s why I started a company to help the average person to do this more easily. As I said in the video, the main threat is the Google id which is on the phone and the solution to that is to have a de Google phone, which is a phone without a Google login.
It is also a phone that has no hidden communications with Google that can reveal device identifiers or locations. This can knock out a significant portion of the tracking. We sell various models of the Google phones in our store. These phones are around $400 so they are cheaper than normal phones. We have the bytes VPN service, which I started a few years ago. The purpose of a VPN service is to hide your IP address.
Secondarily, it provides encryption to hide your traffic from anyone listening. This protects against maninthemiddle attacks, especially caused by governments and corporations. Our VPN service has worldwide coverage and is provided by an entity known to you, me. Hopefully someone you can trust. We have a Braxmail service that hides identity information from your email and prevents you from showing up on contact lists. It also eliminates IP addresses from showing up in the header or in logs.
We offer unlimited aliases, seven domains and a webmail. Check that out for $50 a year. All these are on my store on bracks. Me sign up on there and you will not be asked for any personal information to sign up like email. I also want to remind you that I’ve moved my live streams to rumbleandrobraxman locals. com. These live streams are on Thursdays 08:00 p. m. Pacific time.
Join me there if you want to ask questions. Live. Thank you for watching. And I’ll see you again next time. Our. .