➡ Voice Over IP (VoIP) is a service that allows you to make calls and send texts without using a SIM card, providing extra privacy by not tying a single phone number to your identity. It’s a cost-effective solution that can be used on any device and doesn’t replace your SIM card. However, it requires an internet connection to work, and while it can be used on mobile phones, it doesn’t eliminate the need for a mobile service provider. Despite some misconceptions, VoIP is not new technology and is commonly used in homes and businesses.
➡ This text discusses the use of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services for privacy. It explains that VoIP allows users to have a phone number without revealing their identity, which is useful for maintaining privacy. However, not all VoIP services offer SMS (texting) capabilities, which is a major drawback as most people communicate via text. The text also warns about the high costs and hidden fees of some VoIP services, and suggests using a service like Brax Virtual Phone, which offers affordable plans and reliable SMS services.
➡ Brax Virtual Phone Service offers a privacy-focused solution for those who want to keep their real phone numbers private. With a subscription, you get a U.S. or Canada phone number that can be used for local calls and texts. The service also includes features like voicemail forwarding to email, text forwarding, and the ability to make and receive calls via an app. However, it’s intended for personal use only and misuse can lead to termination of the number.

Today, I will teach you about an approach where you don’t use your SIM card on your phone to make call search and text. This is when you use a service called Voice Over IP or VoIP. I want to make clear that this is a beginner video and I won’t try to explain advanced concepts here. Mainly, you use this service to provide additional phone numbers for calling and texting. This gives you privacy options where you’re not constantly providing a single phone number to everyone. A single phone number which would easily identify you online. There are many basic questions like, do you still need a SIM card on your phone? People are very confused about the solution because they think it replaces a SIM card.

It does not. There’s also a perception that this is a safer option for communications, but the mechanics on how to do this are completely misunderstood. In any case, the main characteristic of some select VoIP solution is that it is possible to get phone numbers without showing your ID or providing some proof of your identity. That is normally required to get phone service from a typical phone carrier. Thus, you can get, from the right providers, an identity-free phone number. This solution also serves as a landline. There are many providers of landline equivalent solutions, but in the end, you will end up possibly being required to show some ID or the cable company knows where you live anyway.

You can have the option of a private number but also one that can be free from observation from the carrier side by not having a mobile number or a number known to belong to you. I also want to tell you that this VoIP industry is a very difficult area to navigate. It is rampant with overpricing and even opaque pricing at pre-sale, so you sign up and the real bill is significantly higher than what you saw advertised. I’m going to explain this solution to you as clearly as I can and yes, my company is a VoIP provider with our product called Brax Virtualthon, so I’m stating that up front.

I’ll give you a general background on that product later and spoiler alert, it is ridiculously cheap. But I created this solution because I couldn’t find one that is focused on privacy, easy to use and reasonably priced, no pre-sale gimmicks and no identity. Feel free to compare what I say with what you see out there. If you want to learn about the application of voice over IP in the privacy arena, stay right there. The point to VoIP for personal use is to get additional phone numbers without an identity. I think for most people it is instinctive to understand the value of additional numbers that are not publicly known and also numbers that can accept texting in addition to calls.

There are many situations where we are required to give some phone number, particularly to internet platforms and many of you wish you can give a number out, that doesn’t get tied to your real name. The most common use of VoIP with SMS is for use with internet platforms for two-factor authentication. Not all platforms will accept a VoIP number, but it is always great to have an extra number in your back pocket that you can hand over whenever you want to keep your well-known number out of the mix. Your well-known number can easily identify you. It isn’t much of an effort to just check your phone number in credit reports to find your real name and address, for example.

And nowadays, internet platforms capture contact lists with your phone number so they can get your private information directly from your friends. So by insulating the phone number you provide to strangers and internet platforms from your real identity, you maintain privacy. VoIP hasn’t really been used much for personal use, so some of the uses of this tech for personal privacy use are not too well-known. Aside from protecting your identity, the biggest advantage of a voice-over IP service potentially is cost. From the right providers, you can get additional numbers at a fraction of the price of a regular sales service.

Plus, you don’t need extra devices that you just piggyback the VoIP service over your existing device. VoIP will run on any device, computer, tablet or phone, and it can run on multiple devices simultaneously. VoIP is not new tech. VoIP is extremely common. In this modern world, it has replaced landlines in most homes. You pretty much need it to set up a landline. If you contact your cable company like Spectrum, they will offer you a landline which is actually a very expensive voice-over IP service. In offices, phone systems are actually all based on VoIP. So if you’re calling some business that has a multiple-line system, chances are you’re calling to a VoIP number.

So don’t think of this as new technology. It is not. There are many ways to set up VoIP in a business setting. Large companies will run a computer system inside their own facility that will provide the VoIP service and then subscribe to a trunk service to hook it to the phone network. Nowadays, more and more are just looking at providers of the service in the cloud. So either way, there has to be a VoIP service provider and that VoIP service provider is responsible for trunking your traffic to the phone network. By the way, a certain type of phone hardware is required for the actual phones.

These phones are called SIP phones. I want you all to do this later. Go on Amazon and search for SIP phones. S-I-P phones. You will find a ton of office-looking phones. So SIP is the actual technology that enables VoIP to exist. I’ll get back to telling you about SIP phones again a little later. The first thing you need to understand is that no matter if you’re a big business having a hundred phones or you’re a single homeowner with a single phone line, having a voiceover IP line means you need internet. So if you have some sort of internet already in your home, usually from having a Wi-Fi router installed by your cable provider, then you are already equipped to do VoIP.

That’s all that’s needed to set up a LAN line. The next question that people ask a lot is if they can do VoIP over a mobile phone. Again, the requirement is the same. You need internet. So let’s talk about that clearly as the internet question comes up from people misunderstanding if you can use this with a mobile phone. Typically on a mobile phone, you get cell service by your carrier giving you a SIM card or an eSIM. Either way, you get a phone service from a mobile carrier like T-Mobile, AT&T, or Verizon in the US. The mobile carrier will often offer you a complete cell phone service with calling, texting, and then data.

Data means internet. But you need to understand these as separate services. For voiceover IP purposes, the most important is data because this means that without tethering to some home Wi-Fi, your phone always has internet no matter where you go. For VoIP to work, you just need the data portion of the service. Carriers do not sell just data only. They make money by selling the service to include phone, texting, and data. However, don’t let that bother you. For the phone number to be a threat on the carrier side to privacy, you need to give out the number.

Don’t forget, a standard number provided by a cell carrier is tied to your real identity. In a theoretical case, you get a brand new service from T-Mobile. They give you a SIM card with unlimited talk and text and some monthly limit on data. Let’s say it’s 10 GB. If you never gave the phone number that came with the service to anyone, then there is no privacy threat even if the SIM card is installed on your phone. Again, let me repeat this. Even if your phone service came with a phone number, if you never made a call or never received a call or text using that number, you have nothing for any party to see.

So there’s no traffic to associate with your identity, even if the phone number is registered to you with full ID. I’m not suggesting that you never use the phone number with your SIM card. I’m just suggesting that you should start being aware of when you use that number, which is presumably your well-known public number. Controlling when you use that number is a way to manage your privacy. Back to the problem. If you have no internet on the phone, there’s no way to get a voiceover IP service at all times since you have to find internet for people to reach you.

Let’s say you decided to use the phone only over Wi-Fi. No SIM card. Then, of course, you can’t use the phone on the road unless you find Wi-Fi somewhere. Thus, it is unrealistic to use a VoIP solution without some sort of mobile source of service. Are there data-only SIM cards? Are there ways of having internet only and no phone numbers? Some carriers will give you a data-only plan for use on devices like iPads, but they are very restrictive with this. They want to make sure to charge you the full price, so they make sure to check the device make using the IMEI device identifier to make sure it’s an approved device.

There are also those who will be able to load a SIM card on an LTE router, kind of like this kind of broadband modem. This gives you Wi-Fi access anywhere if you lug the brick around. Carriers will give you a SIM card for these devices, but it ends up costing more. Plus, these bricks are not convenient. There are companies offering eSIM data-only roaming solutions. We are going to be providing this service soon ourselves, by the way. But in the meantime, you will find many of these data-only solutions being offered by companies like Salie.

Now, Salie requires a Google ID, so be careful with that. In general, if you find a cheap sales service, just a normal SIM card is fine as long as you decide to limit who gets to know the phone number on it. The VoIP Number The real critical factor to why you want to use VoIP is that the phone number can actually be devoid of any ID, meaning through the proper service provider, it’s possible to get phone numbers without identifying yourselves, meaning there will be no carrier records of your name being attached to a phone number.

Now, I want to be clear here that this is an extremely rare service nowadays. Most VoIP providers will take your complete picture ID and verified address to even provide the service. But I offer this service called the Brax Virtual Phone. We offer this without asking you for any identification or even any real name. If this is important to you, then there will be very few choices when it comes to a service with no ID. If you’re a spammer, by the way, this solution is not for you. Your account will automatically be terminated in a heartbeat.

I’ll explain this later. SMS Texting Here’s the other element of a VoIP that is actually rare. Since businesses use only the phone side of the service, typically large providers do not have SMS service or texting needs. But for personal use, the current average everyday user actually spends more time texting and hardly any phone calling. So the main focus of a privacy solution is to really communicate mostly by text. And here’s the other interesting factoid. The reality is that if you know the person you’re talking to, you can just communicate with them via some app like Signal, Viber or Telegram, and there’s no need to use the phone number.

You will find that you can absolutely limit the amount of traffic that goes on calling or texting, especially with friends and family. But still, texting is very important. And the most important use of texting nowadays, which is actually the main breach in privacy, is using it to secure accounts via two-factor authentication. This is when they text you a code to access your account. Platforms like Google and Facebook use this information to identify you precisely, so you want to avoid giving them a texting number that can be matched to your name.

Though unfortunately, Google and Facebook knows this so they don’t allow VoIP. Most do, though. There’s just a few exceptions. Unfortunately, very few VoIP services offer SMS, so there aren’t really a lot of options offered for those by the big players that service businesses. And this is because the VoIP industry is not really geared for personal use, whether it be with pricing, the need for privacy, or the necessity of texting. So again, Brax Virtual Phone has all of this, so you don’t have to worry. I’m just describing the landscape for you so you can independently check out what I’m saying here.

Now that you understand the basic structure of VoIP, you need to know how it is actually used. On the calling side, as I mentioned earlier, calls are possible only using SIP phones, and you can buy those from Amazon, for example. You get the SIP phone and program it to work with the particular VoIP you subscribe to. But the optional way to do calls is via software. Instead of physical hardware to do calling, there are many apps that can simulate a SIP phone. For example, on an Android phone, the most reliable one that is available is SIPnetic.

And then on most other devices, including iPhones, there’s an app called Linphone. On computers, there’s MicroSIP for Windows and there’s Linphone for Linux. So you can actually simulate having phone service without even having an actual phone, since VoIP will run on a computer. Now a strategy that you can use also, and this requires no extra equipment, is to forward your VoIP calls to your normal mobile phone. The advantage of this is that you keep your numbers private while not changing the utility of having a mobile phone. How do you use VoIP for texting? Now this is where there’s a major weakness in many VoIP services.

Actually, in reality, many don’t even offer a personal SMS. And I will stake this up front. Some SIP apps will accept SMS, but not all. And they are notoriously unable to get 100% reliable SMS because the SIP app needs a constant internet connection with the VoIP servers. That’s not normally possible because phones go to sleep. But fortunately, we came up with a solution for that. In our case, the Braxme app itself becomes an SMS app called My SMS. And there you can get your text with 100% reliability. Your phone does not have to be on to get the text, and you can receive text on any device.

Just log into your Braxme account and you find your SMS. Alternatively, you can also forward your SMS. This is, again, a good strategy for keeping numbers private, but with 100% of the convenience, since you will just get text like normal. But to keep the number secret, you reply using Braxme My SMS. The SMS can be forwarded both to another number and optionally, it can also be forwarded to email. The actual reason for this kind of forwarding is typically for the convenience of two-factor authentication with internet platforms. If you’re waiting for some login code, you want to get it immediately.

It’s not intended for long conversations. The advantage of VoIP is cancelled if the cost of having the service is too expensive. To compare the cheapest cell phone service with very severe limitations is likely $90 a year. That’s absolutely rock bottom, minimal service. The cheapest I found of this type is from Red Pocket, and this is not even that easy to find since they don’t advertise it. Normally, it’s $10 a month or $120 a year, an extremely limited plan. If you go to major VoIP players like Nextiva and RingCentral, they will put on their website that the starting price could be $25 a month.

But when you start signing up, they then tack on regulatory fee nonsense to fake you. You’ll end up paying $40 a month, and that’s with no personal SMS. So it ends up close to $500 a year per line, minimum. Again, they are not in the personal market. They focus on businesses. Then there’s the ones you’ve heard of many times through endless late-night marketing like UMA and MagicJack. These give you a dedicated device for a landline and then you’re stuck with their service. No SMS, no mobile. And then come the surprises. I bought an UMA device and I was being charged $99.95 a month.

For what I don’t know, mostly regulatory fees apparently. Again, a base service has no SMS and they have no equipment to handle SMS. Really a sketchy industry, to be honest. So I just want you to know this so you’re not led to make a mistake jumping into solutions based on trickery and marketing. Now, just to compare, the Brax virtual phone price is ridiculously low. It is $75 a year for the base plan, which is sufficient to handle normal secondary calling and texting. Nothing extra. And then from here, you can expand to our unlimited plans.

VoIP is not for everyone. Having a VoIP line is in fact something that everyone should have. The option to have an additional phone number that is a secret number but not tied to any ID is quite a valuable tool if you want some privacy. Unfortunately, the phone number now is one of the primary ways we are identified, either through the internet or in other transactions. So having no extra number available is quite a liability. But using only VoIP, meaning no other publicly known number, is not for everyone. For one, certain entities are in fact using it for identity and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is used in the future for age verification.

Financial institutions report your phone number to credit bureaus. Obviously, credit card companies do as well. What I’m saying is that having a number in reserve is what is needed for privacy, but we need to use it in context. There are times when we know an entity is using the number as an identity so you give them a real number. But if the entity is sketchy or some internet platform that will just steal data, then of course, that’s when you hold the line and keep your number private. In other words, what I’m saying is that it is difficult for me to give guidance that all of you need to give up your well-known phone number.

No one will pay attention to me and it is unrealistic. But as a privacy number, it is critical, particularly in internet privacy, to factor authentication using phone numbers is so common now. Do you really need some shoe store or even Amazon to know your real info? Is it necessary for them to know? The Brax Virtual Phone Service. Now, I want to summarize what’s available at least with our Brax Virtual Phone Service. For each subscription, you get a phone number that you can provision and currently it is only available with USA and Canada phone numbers.

And they can only call out or send text locally, meaning within the USA or within Canada. I hope to expand this someday, but this is the current limitation. It can be used internationally. It’s just that it’s a USA or Canada only line. You can choose to get a phone number from anywhere. The state or city is irrelevant. It is not tied to your actual location. Now, the number has limits. They are intended for personal use only within the usage limits of the plan. It cannot be used to spam anyone. And that is detected by software that detects patterns of misuse that indicate it’s being used for normal conversations.

And if the software detects use outside of the Terms of Service, then the number is immediately terminated. For example, someone making a lot of calls will trigger the algorithm very quickly. This is a privacy solution, not for some spam company. When you set up the service, you have the option for where to send voicemail since that can be forwarded as email. You can forward text and calls to another number. You can forward text to email as well. So lots of options in managing your messaging. If you want to make external calls from your phone, you will typically install the Sysnetik app, put in your credentials, and then it should be able to make and receive calls without forwarding.

Receiving calls is not 100% though if the phone is off. But if you have email on your phone, you can get voicemail via email. For viewing and sending texts, you will use the My SMS feature of BraxMe, and this runs on any browser so you don’t need any special device. And My SMS supports MMS so you can send and receive images. As I said, our particular service starts out at $75 per year for the base plan and $15 a month for the unlimited plan. You can use the information I’ve provided here to compare with other potential services.

But it would be pretty hard to beat, is my guess, as I said, I actually created this service because I needed it and there was none available. There’s a lot of people using this service or would like to use this service and they’re talking about it on our platform BraxMe so you can chat with the community. Just look for the community chat called Brax Virtual Phone. I’m sure people will give you an honest opinion about it. There’s a lot of people on the social media site all talking about privacy and security issues and it would really be critical to learning to participate in a community where everyone is focused on the same thing.

There’s a much more advanced video that I did last year which actually focuses on a more sophisticated solution of multiple VoIP lines, each one serving a particular purpose. This is really important when you really want to study how you manage your phone lines and understand more risks than what I’ve stated in this beginner video. You should be seeing that video now and I’ll add it in the description. Thanks for watching and see you next time. [tr:trw].

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