Using Phones Without SIM cards? Check out the Privacy Benefits.

you may be one of those people eagerly looking for a phone solution that uses no SIM cards I'm not sure what your expectations would be with this approach because it is not perfect however it is a solution you should be aware of and should consider but to get a full benefit out of a no SIM phone service you must really understand how the phone system works and what threats are eliminated by the no SIM phone you must weigh the particular benefits based on your assessment of your own personal threats it also means an awareness of the inconvenience since of course any approach out of the norm causes some problems that you may not be willing to tolerate by the way there are benefits to using a no sim solution even part-time it doesn't have to be used all the time this opens up more possibilities so we'll get into that it's important to learn the details of this since using a no sim solution without understanding of all the threats may still lead to zero Improvement in privacy if you're willing to expand your knowledge of Phone Solutions including ones that use no SIM cards stay right [Music] there I have to always present the big picture of the phone network since most people have no real understanding of how it all works and how it fits into the surveillance infrastructure in Communications the phone network known as the public switch telephone Network or pstn is what allows you to connect to others using a phone number unfortunately this phone network has been the subject of government Mass surveillance since its Inception as the Telegraph and heavy surveillance has been built in since World War II in some ways this seems like a outdated concept since many people do their Communications using various apps like signal WhatsApp telegram messenger and so on and really just need internet service but unfortunately the world doesn't operate in the way we want the phone number and the email is the only way to communicate with new people and many businesses and the big entities we rely on Define our moves and often it relates to having an identity and a way to find us the phone number is an identity if you go to a government website they will not only want an email address they will ask for a phone number they ask for this for medical coverage taxt forms or with the use of any government service this goes the same way with private companies most platforms demand a phone number that they can send an SMS message to to do two- Factor authentication so basically the phone number is an ID card the reason the phone number is an effective ID card is because the government actually has a record of every call ever made there should be no big mystery to most of you since you can see this on your phone bills but the bigger shocker to most people is that every single text message you've sent is kept in databases one of which is the main aggregator the database that contains everything is the FBI dcis database I'm sure other three-letter agencies even even have worldwide databases the other thing that most people don't realize is that the government can check on everyone's calls very easily and even listen into conversations effortlessly in real time in the US this surveillance Tech was enabled by the Kalia law Communications assistant for law enforcement similarly Snowden has also clearly revealed that all the same data is being sent to the No Such agency using a program called prism and this has the participation of every single carrier so to make this clear to you all it should be apparent that a government is able to see who calls who and is able to establish a clear connection between people and this is often referred to as a relationship map the use of the cell network radio communications introduces other risks such as direct radio interception by devices called MZ catchers these devices can listen listen into call traffic and is used extensively by law enforcement for example it was used to wiretap Michael Cohen Trump's ex lawyer and the cell radio communications also include a level of location tracking not as precise as the Wi-Fi triangulation used by Apple and Google but enough to isolate your location to within a mile or less so that is the foundation of the pstn communications Network we will all like to avoid this and not be part of the data collection of the government if a government wants to find you though and you're a targeted individual then a no SIM phone solution is not for you there are ways to surveil targeted people by watching the people you know your approach should be no phone used at all but for the regular people who are interested in keeping their data private what exactly is the no sim solution and how does this help keep our data from the carriers and the state there are two elements here that are important to understand one is the identity portion a phone number with a regular carrier using a normal SIM card is often tied to something called kyc or know your customer this is a regulation which forces carriers to know who they're giving phone numbers to and this is the feature that makes the use of a SIM card or normal phone line bad for privacy because you have to show ID all SIM cards have a fixed identifier called an MZ or International mobile subscriber identity and they match that to your identity often the caller ID will even have your actual name on it and so there's no hiding for most people the alternate solution is to use a cloud-based phone service where the phone traffic is handled solely through the internet and without directly using the cell network this technology is often referred to as voice over IP in order to explain this fully we will be using a Google phone as our base device in all instances where I talk of a mobile phone I'm using a Google phone in this example because there's almost no point eliminating carrier or government Mass surveillance while allowing big Tech surveillance might as well protect against everything next I will introduce you to version of Voiceover IP called the bra virtual phone service and then we'll discuss how this can be used when we talk about a SIM card we are talking about a regular cell phone service provided by a cell phone carrier in the US the three major cell providers are T-Mobile AT&T and Verizon then there are resellers called mvnos that are affiliated with these carriers examples of these are companies like mint Cricket Straight Talk red pocket and so on so our plan is to make calls without ever connecting to these carriers let me just demonstrate here how we can make and receive calls on your Computing device which does not need a mobile phone by the way using bra virtual phone in this example I'm going to mix it up I'm going to use a phone with a bra virtual phone account then I will use a computer with another bra virtual phone account so phone the computer to introduce more variety I will need software to access the bra virtual F service so in this case I will be using an application called linphone on the mobile phone on the computer I will run an app called microsip I'm not going to show you this in detail here but when you sign up for the bra virtual phone service you will be able to provision a phone number in the USA or Canada and then you will have access to this setup screen the important thing to note in this setup for later is that you have the option to forward your calls or have your calls go direct to voicemail which can then be forwarded as email you can also do forwarding of SMS messages to email or to another phone number and then another option is the ability to send and receive text directly from the Brax me app itself which can be viewed from any browser this means that you do not need an actual phone in Theory I'll make a separate video demonstrating the bra virtual phone setup and options later okay you saw in the setup that there are options where you don't actually need to ever make a call but here we will make outgoing calls let me make a call from the phone to the computer these phone numbers are for demonstration only by the way and will be deleted testing testing you can see that that connected and so I will hang up then let me do the call in Reverse now and use the PC to call the phone hello hello hello now just to demonstrate that this is able to dial any number I will just call some other line This one is the Microsoft tech support number hi thanks for calling Microsoft what do you see here you can see that I'm able to use the phone network or psdn normally I have no SIM card let me show you that this phone has no SIM card but it does require that both the phone and the computer have some internet access like through Wi-Fi so in the case of a home with DSL internet service you definitely do not need a SIM card as your device a phone a computer or a dedicated Hardware phone called a zip phone can all use the internet and the phone service is actually handled in the cloud by the Voiceover IP service what are the advantages here first you are not using cell service so there's no phone number associated with your name on the cell network someone could do a nationwide search of your phone number and you will not be found second you're not connecting to a cell tower so your location is not available to either the carrier or a third party listening or tracking the call third the bra virtual phone service has no requirement for kyc we don't register your name any where so it is not searchable on the phone network let's talk more about kyc for a moment there is still kyc required for any number but I supplied that kyc with my own identification for bra's virtual phone I do not require that of my customers also for the edification of those interested my trunk provider for bra virtual phone is actually in Canada so I'm not directly subject to USA pstn requirement when someone is searching through phone records and searching through text the main advantage of this no sim solution is that there is no corresponding identity to make an easy match now again we need to understand that this is not perfect governments in particular will track you if they know who you are calling so though they may not be able to identify you directly they can if the person you're calling has a regular phone number with their kyc ID I don't normally think of this since I'm not a targeted individual and have never committed any crime so this is not a global concern for all however aside from that there is the benefit of disappearing from the mass surveillance Grid it's even better if both parties are actually on a bra virtual phone since then both parties have no identities here's an interesting little feature I will demonstrate again if two parties have bra virtual phone you can dial each other by extension when you sign up for bra virtual phone you will be given an extension number and you can call anyone on the same service just with that extension let me just demonstrate that extension calling testing testing now what's the benefit here well actually this is quite special when you do extension to extension calling there is no record on the phone network this is not classified as a psdn call there is no billing info associated with it and there are no records even on the trunk provider so we will have two people calling using normal phone lines but with no apparent surveillance information there's another major benefit to using a bra virtual phone type of service and this is that you can provide a different phone number to various platforms for two- Factor authentication instead of giving these sites your regular phone number you give them your virtual phone number and your identity is not Ultra apparent they can't search you on the phone number databases that they have this is actually a major issue since many sites use the phone number to confirm your real identity now that I've described this solution how do you actually use this in real life you actually have a range of choices you have the option of forwarding all calls and text to email this is even more interesting because here you don't even need any special device to receive incoming messages your texts and calls can all arrive by email the only time you'd need to use an app like linphone and need internet would be to make an outgoing phone call now here here's another unique feature here SMS or texting can be done anonymously using the Brax me app itself so this means you don't even need to install anything if you're interested in just the texting portion this is particularly useful if you're using the bra virtual phone primarily for TFA let's talk about the many hybrid solutions that solve the main problem and that is the lack of Internet without a SIM card the phone has no internet the first option is to use a dataon SIM card now this is hard to get in the US as carriers deliberately block phones from using this if the device is able to make a phone call but there are hotspot devices sometimes called myfi like this device here from Netgear which is called an LTE modem sell data is all about internet connectivity sell data doesn't actually go through the pstn so it exists as a separate channel on the phone your data traffic gets routed directly to the internet and you can use the normal internet encryption protocols and vpns to obscure the traffic all you want so normally this is a safe solution obviously data only SIM cards may still require kyc if purchased from a US carrier so it is definitely not Anonymous however the absence of phone or texting traffic limits any surveillance by the way I have this Netgear modem and I did a video about it before but I didn't like my particular service which was T-Mobile on this because they were throttling the data on the hotspot so just make sure to find a carrier that will not throttle also the advantage of a separate device is that your main calling device like the phone is insulated from attacks that can happen on the hotspot device for example it should be immune from Stingray type attacks or even baseband modem attacks like Sim jacking there are definitely cyber security benefits and of course there is no need to use this constantly as you can always use Wi-Fi and turn this device on only if you need internet remotely using it occasionally and only when you're on the Move limits the attack surface the other similar option is to carry another phone and make it a hotspot this actually worked better for some carriers as it does not get throttled let's say this phone has a regular sim card with a phone number remember that that doesn't matter if no one calls you or you call no one on that number this works particularly well if you never give out that number so you could use it as a dedicated hotspot only and only in cases where it is needed again think of the hybrid use cases use Wi-Fi at home most of the time and need use these hotspot or data only options only if needed as another example you can put an actual SIM card on your D Google phone that is running bra's virtual phone as your normal phone service but here you have the option to turn off the sim card when not in use so that makes it disappear from View and cannot be recognized by a stingray you'll need a phone that can disable the SIM card this is a standard feature on the Google phones so understand this little detail if you turn on your sim card but never make a call on it or send a text then there is no data to capture other than perhaps a rough location here's another option use prepaid SIM cards then there is no identity associated with this Sim even with the location check out the advantage here though the bra virtual phone number still exists and you always have it the same number the phone number need not change even when you keep changing SIM cards think about this combination again prepaid SIM cards plus bra's virtual phone this is probably the most convenient the solutions I mentioned here are quite usable for those who realize that their lives do not revolve around the mobile phone those who can wait for phone and text messages to arrive via email and those not obsessed with mobile apps if you're more of a PC type of person then this will work well what these Solutions offer though is a way to disappear from the Grid at least as far as phone traffic is concerned you still have the ability to use the phone network but your general presence VI an identity is eliminated for protecting yourself against being searched online this should be very effective now together with a Google phone which hides you from Big Tech tracking the no sim solution hides you from carrier and government Mass surveillance in case you're wondering the bra virtual phone service use as an example in this video is one of the products you will find in the bra me store this particular service is very inexpensive likely one of the lowest price Voiceover IP options available the starting tier is only $60 a year which is $5 a month there are options for unlimited calls and texts as well we offer other products on the store including various the Google phones which is a perfect privacy pair with bra virtual phone service we also have our identity free bra mail product and our VPN service byes VPN to hide your IP address come join us on our community on brme and the store is there when you sign up thank you for watching and see you next time

Channel: Rob Braxman Tech

Views: 74,598

Keywords: internet privacy, tech privacy, privacy, de-googled phones, brax2 phone

Id: 6mBTMxYcURs

Length: 21min 2sec (1262 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024