Today I’m going to talk about a privacy tool that I created that has so many uses. It’s called the Brax Virtual Phone which is a voice over IP service or VoIP. VoIP is heavily used in businesses so this is not a new concept but we’re going to talk about using it for a privacy focused context for personal use. This service can be used in a very simple way as a supplementary phone number or it can be used as an actual landline but it is more than a phone calling service because it can handle SMS.

And what’s unique about this is that it is offered with no need for KYC. In other words we do not ask for any ID. We do not send any identification details to the carrier so basically it is a phone number that can be a throwaway if needed or it can be a long-term number but the key is that it is not shown as registered in your name. There are quite a few advantages with having a number that is unregistered especially for retaining your privacy on the internet. And the interesting thing about this service is that you do not need a new phone or even a SIM card.

As long as you can have access to the internet this phone number can be active. If you’re interested in learning what this is all about stay right there. I created the Brax virtual phone service about a year ago now. In fact it was launched on March 1, 2024 and I watch this service grow slowly in popularity. It’s not an easy concept to grasp but it is now catching on. Brax virtual phone as I said is a VoIP number that includes SMS. I had to create this product because I was constantly searching for solutions to the phone privacy problem and I couldn’t find one that did the job.

For one an alternate phone solution needs to have SMS or texting otherwise it can’t be used to handle two-factor authentication. Next it had to be established without KYC or no ID. This was such a big issue and I found that none of the big players who do this had a solution to the KYC problem. All of them required KYC. Then the biggest deal was cost. Most VoIP services are made for businesses and are typically quite expensive. I had to come up with a product for the very specific privacy use cases that my followers have at a cost that was cheaper than getting a SIM card.

This solution is cheaper than even residential VoIP solutions like UMA or MagicJack both of which don’t even offer SMS. It is way way cheaper than RingCentral or Venage. As of right now I have not been able to find a service that is cheaper than what we offer which is a base service of $60 per year for a phone number. Unfortunately we’re offering this service in the US and Canada only. I can offer no KYC numbers in other countries if the demand is there but there will be no SMS unfortunately. But now before I explain how to use this in detail let’s first restate the privacy problem.

Today Big Tech and many internet platforms have decided that they will identify you by your phone number. As I explained in my last video this is actually a sneaky attempt at requiring you to show ID whenever you use the internet. All through the subtle technique of requiring your phone number for two-factor authentication. If you give your phone number to a platform then you can presume that they will know who you are exactly through various ways of finding out who owns a phone number. One is through contact lists that they extract from users, matching multiple accounts with phone numbers, and then searching through public databases like credit reports.

And of course governments have full access to the KYC information when you show ID to the carrier to obtain phone service and this is shared through the well publicized PRISM surveillance program. I discussed this in detail in last week’s video on KYC. BRAC’s virtual phone is actually a pretty broad solution. It can support a lot of privacy related objectives and there is not a one-size-fits-all. So what I will do today is to explain the different uses of this product. It can be used as an alternate number for 2FA with any platform. It can be used as a phone number for people you don’t know.

It can be used as a message drop box without requiring any physical device. It can be used to replace a mobile phone by using it as a landline. But before I do that let me just show you a little demo of how you would set up BRAC’s virtual phone after you subscribe to it. After you purchase the subscription from the store you will need to go to my services and there you should see the option my virtual phone service. And when you click on that it will show all your virtual phone subscriptions.

You can have multiple phone subscriptions, one per line. Here I only have one. When I click on that it will now guide me through the process of provisioning a phone number and that’s the objective here initially to pick a phone number. The very first thing I need to do is to select a state. There’s no reason to just limit yourself to the state you’re currently in. The system is agnostic to this and you can choose whatever you want. In this example I will choose Arizona and continue. The next step is to narrow the choice down to a rate center.

A rate center will then establish the area code and prefix of the number. So I will just pick one here which is Globe Arizona. Next I now get a choice of phone numbers and I will pick one from the list. Just a warning here that in some small towns there may not be SMS coverage. If so there will be a no SMS warning next to the phone number. Then I get a final choice to go ahead with provisioning. Once provisioning is complete you will automatically be shown the setup page for the phone number.

By the way before you leave this page you must hit the save button since some of the computed parameters here are not yet permanent. If you forget to do that and hit cancel just come back to this again and hit save. Next time you select the subscription from my virtual phone service you will go directly to this setup page. This has your basic credentials and shows your plan and current usage. For many users especially if you have another device you can focus on the call failover options as well as the SMS options.

As one of the simpler options you can just forward your calls to another phone number. This can be used to keep your main phone number secret but you will still get the calls on your normal phone. You can do the same with SMS. You can forward your text from this new number to your main phone. This way you now have a private way of getting phone calls and SMS easily from internet platforms and people you don’t know. If you use this feature you don’t even need to do anything else and you can just hand out your secret phone number to whoever you want.

This is really useful for the rare communications for 2FA or one-way calls where you don’t have to call back. By the way if you don’t answer the phone the call will go to voicemail and here’s the interesting part. We can forward your voicemail directly to your email so you don’t even need any extra device. It’s the same with your SMS. The SMS can be forwarded to email as well. This method allows you to have a drop box of communications without needing a device since you can just get all your messages via email.

I will show you this later. To read text messages in real time and respond to text we give you a way to do that directly on Braxme with the option called My SMS. This will appear on your app after you subscribe. The other option you have and this is more advanced is to actually have a separate device for doing this calling. This is what businesses do. They do voice over IP calling using a SIP device. Here you can see the SIP credential section. These are the parameters that have to be set up on your SIP phone of your choice.

If you don’t have a hardware SIP phone you can install software on your phone or computer which will simulate a SIP phone. We have instructions for three most common app options. For Windows you can use the app Micro SIP and then for Android you can use SIPnetic. For all other phones and for Linux you can use Linfone. There are many other SIP apps but these are the most popular. Alternatively you can just install the SIP credentials on an actual SIP phone. You can find them cheap on eBay and basically they are leftover phones used in business.

Many of them can handle multiple lines. If you don’t want to do that we offer a BYOD service where we will install the SIP credentials for you if you bring your own device. After that all you have to do is plug in your phone to an ethernet port and the phone is immediately active like a landline. We sell a SIP phone pre-configured already as well as with your credentials so if you’re not a techie all you have to do is plug it in and you have phone service. Here’s what that grand stream device looks like.

Again all you have to do is plug this into your network with an ethernet cable and you are good to go. And here’s a used Polycom that we also have. This one can handle multiple lines. These hardware devices don’t do texting so you have to go to Braxme to see or send text. Now let me show you my SMS which is shown on the Braxme menu. Here it shows the new phone number we have and if I have multiple numbers it will show as well. I already have a sample text message here but will create a new one.

When I hit that plus sign I can now compose a new message and it lets me just fill in a phone number and the name and the message. And let’s let it rip. Once you put a name on the contact it will add it to the SMS contact list so future conversations will show the contact name. A moment later you can see the response and you can see that it’s working. My SMS is 100% reliable and can receive MMS but we don’t store your SMS messages instead we retrieve them directly from the carrier whenever you need to look at it.

Now that you see my Brax virtual phone in operation let me talk about the various ways this can be used. The main use of course is to hide your phone number but you’ll need to plan out when you can hide your phone number and when you cannot. The usual strategy is that this is a second phone number meaning you already have a mobile phone with a sim card and you have internet access on the phone. This is likely the typical use. If you have a base subscription you can set your phone to forward calls and SMS to your main phone and to your email and that’s all you need to do.

This now immediately gives you a spare number to use without any kind of further setup or device. This becomes your new secret phone number. By the way just to make this clear the caller ID on your new line will be the rate center you selected. This is usually a city or district in a large city. You can use this for internet platforms asking for 2FA and this stops these platforms from getting your real identity. Now I will tell you straight off the bat that some internet platforms like Google and Facebook will not accept a VoIP number but most will including eBay or Amazon and you can use an alternate method of 2FA for Google like Pascis or a YubiKey to get around this.

Sometimes some sites will force you to give your actual phone number. Just understand that when they do that they want your real identity. You have to decide if you want to do that or leave the platform. Usually I give my real phone number to any financial site but I will never give my mobile phone number to Facebook. It’s nice though to have an option with all other sites on the internet. My personal objective is to eliminate the use of my real phone number on any internet platform if it’s possible and remember a BRACS virtual phone account has no identity.

The number is not registered in your name. The neat thing about having an additional phone number is that you can give it to people you don’t know. Many retailers for example just ask for a phone number in return for a discount but once you sign in you get spam forever. With BRACS virtual phone you can change phone numbers if this becomes extreme. There are many cases when you need to give out a number but you don’t want to identify yourself. Having this in reserve is fantastic. You need to distinguish though between people who really don’t know you versus those that have access to your credit reports like lenders and banks.

To these entities you have to give your mobile number so that this number remains a secret otherwise it will be recorded on your credit report. The truly reliable use of a BRACS virtual phone is as a landline particularly if you have a SIP hardware phone. Just use it like any normal landline. The brand stream option I showed earlier even has a wireless handset so you can walk around your house with it. You cannot forward calls and have a landline by the way. It’s an either or because only one device will ring. SIP phones are used by most businesses so this is a very robust solution.

It’s just a change of use to a residential option. If you have a normal mobile phone the most robust solution to getting calls from your secret number is to forward the calls to your main number. You can do the same with text but if you have to call out you can’t call out from your normal number without revealing your number in the caller ID. The solution here is to use the SIP software mainly for outgoing calls and we showed your options previously by using apps like SIPnetik and Linphone. SIPnetik is probably the favorite of all of our users for Android.

Again I would use this mostly for calling out since that is the only time the caller will see your virtual phone number. You do not need to use this to receive calls or texts since it will be forwarded to your normal line. Some people have tried to use SIP apps for both incoming and outgoing calls but it’s hard to make this reliable because the phone is often sleeping and if you make the app run continuously then it uses too much battery. So that is not my preferred use case. When I wanted to be reliable I would just stick to SIP hardware.

Again it depends on how immediate you need to respond to each call. Frankly in modern days probably 90% of people will text instead and you can always go to Braxme and run my SMS which will always use your virtual number. So in my estimation occasional outgoing SIP calling is not too much of a burden. There are more advanced use cases for using a virtual phone and this usually means using several virtual phone numbers and I discussed this in a past video for a really private solution and I will put that video in the description so you can refer to it.

Another possibility which is not as reliable is to use a data sim card and only do SIP 100% of the time on mobile. Again this is not a robust solution but it is obviously more private since there will not be any phone traffic using a line registered to your name. Internet traffic does not cross the public switch telephone network or PSTN. You will not miss messages since you can always receive voicemail and SMS via emails. However like I said I never found ringing to be 100% perfect so this is not good when you really have to answer the phone like for a business.

Hopefully you now know how to utilize this amazing privacy tool and I can’t tell you how many times I felt lucky to have a secret phone number in many unexpected situations. Folks as many of you know this channel is supported solely by this community and the Brax virtual phone service which we offer is actually on my site Brax me. We also have a really popular project which is the Brax 3 phone and this is currently on indiegogo and is set for delivery in March 2025. We have other services that are focused on enhancing your privacy such as our bytes VPN service.

We also have the Brax mail service so you can stop Gmail from stealing your data. Again these products and many more are on our Braxme site. Join the over 100,000 users on that site that discuss privacy issues daily. Thank you also for supporting us on Patreon, Locals, and YouTube memberships. And as a reminder I do a regular live stream on Thursdays at 8pm pacific time on the platform Rumble and Locals.com. See you next time. [tr:trw].

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