Stop Tracking ME!

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How secure is your cell phone? Do you think big tech is the only force watching you? Did you know that every time your phone connects to a satellite or cell tower that connection includes identifying information which allows you to easily be tracked? I mean physically tracked. I’m not talking about tracking your internet site visits which is an infringement on your privacy that you can also read about here. I’m talking about physically tracking over the ground where your phone is located on the earth. Well all this may come as a surprise to you, but this is happening today with all phones, all operating systems, and all cell services. Keep reading to learn the pertinent details of the tracking and the lack of privacy and what one company is doing about it.

Already know about the tracking and all the other life enhancing features of this great solution? Get your ClearPhone here!

What’s to come in this post:

Tracking Explained

You see whenever two devices need to communicate with each other the devices are programmed to use messages that have specific defined packets of information in order to communicate effectively. This defined information is called TCP protocol and it specifies that for each packet of data that gets transmitted between the devises, an ID address of each device needs to be included. This is so that the device sending the data packet can also get the return packet from the recipient device. Today that ID can be either the IP address of your phone or the mac address of your phone or both. The IP address is the end node TCP/IP id that connects your phone to either a WIFI router, a cell tower or to the satellite itself in the case of connecting using your cell service. This TCP/IP id never changes when connecting using your cell service. And when using WIFI it could change each time you connect to a new WIFI router. The signal being transmitted with these id’s and with your packet of data are transmitted in the clear, without any encryption. Today anyone with the right tools can easily track those IP addresses and know everywhere you’ve gone. Here is a vide explaining this and showing how it is done. [Find the video of this and insert here.]

Now our wonderful government has rules against this, but these rules only state that the government cannot track US Citizens and then store that information obtained from the tracking effort. Funny that the government doesn’t say anything about others tracking and storing that data, and in fact big tech, like Google and Apple are doing just that. And then as you see in the references above big tech then sells that information to our wonderful government and others.

All phones have this issue of sending an id that is associated with your phone without any encryption. It doesn’t matter which phone you are using, it doesn’t matter which service you are using, and it doesn’t matter which app you are using. The IP address identifying your phone is broadcast in the clear and when triangulation is done on that IP address the location of your phone is known. Even if you are not making a call or using an app, while the phone is on it is transmitting this IP address to remain connected to the cell service.

Untrackable

So what can we do about this? Well there is one phone company that is taking a protective approach – ClearPhone. Provided your usage remains within the Clear family of apps and products, you won’t have this tracking issue. ClearPhone has taken the same approach that many hackers and spammers have taken and that is to cycle the id often.

First the TCP id that is used by ClearPhone is not created from the same information normally used in TCP ids. Instead ClearPhone’s operating system, ClearOS, creates its own TCP id and recreates it often. So while your phone is connected to one cell tower it may have one id, and then when it connects to the next tower it may have a different id. The details of this are proprietary, but the ClearUnited technical team has reassured me that this cycling occurs and that this is the same tactic that spammers and hackers/scrapers use to remain unknown as their bots traverse about the web pages on the internet. And this is how the ClearPhone becomes untrackable to undesirable tracking software and monitors. The ClearCellular service network knows where your phone is in order to produce contiguous messages, but no one else knows where it is.

Encryption

So along with the tracking of your device itself, another big concern is that your conversations can be monitored and are being monitored. Not only are your conversations monitored, but so are your texts to your friends and family. The data collected from this monitoring is what is used then by big tech to create ads based on your interests. You see you actually agreed to allow big tech to collect this data in the service agreements. They then sell the data for the use in marketing ads and the ads you get then match those things you’ve been talking about.

Well what if you talked to your friend and you both worked out a scheme that when ever a word had an e in it, you used a 3 instead and every time an o was used you used a 0 (zero) instead. So your conversation might look like this – H3ll0 Su3!! Gr3at t0 s33 you at the p00l t0day! Now big tech would not know that you talked to Sue or that you saw her today at the pool. You’ve successfully spoofed them! But you and your friend have to remember your agreed upon scheme and have to remember to continue to use it.

This kind of scheme is a very basic level of encryption. Encryption today uses very sophisticated schemes that are highly mathematical making them near impossible to break. Both the sender of the message and the receiver must know the scheme and the keys in order to send and receive encrypted message and be able to decrypt them upon receipt.

What’s really cool is that today your voice can also be encrypted, something not possible with an analog phone without having a special service doing the encryption in the transmission.

So with encryption, you spoof those who are collecting your text and voice conversations so that the actual words of those conversations are garbled and meaningless. This doesn’t mean you won’t get any ads, it only means that you won’t get ads customized to what you talk about. But more importantly it means your conversations are private and anyone who is listening won’t have a clue what is being said or what is the context of any texts.

Again only one phone today provides this encryption built right into the phone and into the operating system and yes that is ClearPhone. (See my comparison of competitors here.) ClearPhone comes with an app called ClearSignal which provides text and phone calling service. Now remember as in our example above you and your friend had to know and agree to the encryption scheme. The same holds true with any encryption feature, both the sender and the receiver must both be able to know and utilize the encryption scheme otherwise it will be garbled. So whenever you make a call through ClearSignal, if the person you are calling also has ClearSignal then the call can be encrypted. The same with texts, when ever you send a text using ClearSignal, if the recipient also has ClearSignal, then the text can also be encrypted. Advantage is that the content of your data is not known.

Now there is an app called Signal that can be used on any cell phone which also provides encryption. A really nice feature of ClearSignal is that it can be used with Signal. So until all your friends have gotten new shiny untrackable and encrypted ClearPhones, they can use Signal on their current phone and you will be able to have secured texts as well as secured audible phone conversations. How cool is that!!??

Decentralization Of Data

Want to take that encryption scheme to a whole new level? Wouldn’t it be nice to make your data even more secure? How about 1000 times more secure? ClearPhone just did exactly that by adding in blockchain technology allowing the data to be decentralized as well as encrypted! Here’s what that means.

Right now all your data is in a central location or many central locations. You may have data and files and songs all stored on your local computer or on your phone. All the data is together in that one location. Then you may have other data stored in the cloud on Google Drive, DropBox, iCloud, etc. All the data, each file, each song, each piece of data is stored all together in one central location. Any time one of these services is hacked, your whole piece of data is available to the hacker. So let’s take something we know we don’t want hacker to get – your website passwords. Let’s say you have all your passwords stored in your own text file and for ease of access you save that file to your iCloud account. Now if iCloud gets hacked, all your password information is available to the hacker because the whole file is there in one place.

When data is decentralized, the whole of the data is broken into bits and pieces and each bit is stored in a separate location. Then if the servers in one location are hacked, the hacker only gets one bit of your data, it can’t access all of it because the remaining parts are stored on other servers in other locations. Blockchain is used in conjunction with decentralization to encrypt each of the data pieces using a long key and store the pieces in separate locations with that encryption. So even if one piece of the data is acquired by a hacker, it is worthless unless the blockchain master key is known and the other locations of the remaining bits of the data are known so that the pieces can all be reconstructed back together and decrypted to form the whole of the data.

And this is what ClearPhone with the ClearOS does with your data. It first uses your 12 word master key to encrypt the data. Once the data is encrypted it is then chunked up into pieces and stored across the ClearCenter network of servers. So without this master key, your data will not be able to be retrieved or reconstructed. So your data is 1000 times more secure than basic encrypted data. And this is the same technology used in blockchains for cryptocurrencies.

Insert DIDs video.

To provide all this powerful security, the ClearPhone uses a new open source operating system appropriately called ClearOS. ClearOS is a derivative of Android with block chain technology and encryption built right in at the OS level! Without incorporating these technologies at the OS level, the apps would each have to incorporate it into their programming which would be wasteful in development and in app size and functions.

More Reasons to Buy NOW!

On top of the privacy and security, I have found the phone itself to be a very refreshing change from my previous LG. And I can get clear and uninterrupted calls in my living room again. Seems that when the Sprint and TMobile merged, the cell signal inside my house seem to dwindle to a trickle. I seldom had 2 whole bars any more and since my cell phone is my primary phone, this was unacceptable. Now with my new ClearPhone with its highly secure ClearOS transmitting on the ClearCellular network, I can again have clear and undropped calls right in my own living room!! Wooo Hooo!!

So yes, I’m recommending the ClearPhone! Using my link here, you can research and purchase your new ClearPhone and get your new service as well. The costs are comparable to that of the others. I paid less for my new Clear220 (the low end model) than I did for my LG phone 2 years ago when it was on sale, and I have to admit I’ve been happier with my new ClearPhone than the LG. Phones range in price from $600 – $1100. The 220 and the 440 only differ in the cameras provided on the phone and the size of the screen. The processors are different but the same speed and capacity, same amount of memory, and same amount of storage. So I don’t care about the pictures and I wanted a smaller phone anyway. So I chose the lower priced phone. As for the cell service, the unlimited plan for 1 phone is $80 which is very close to what I was paying for Sprint/TMobile which didn’t even work in my home.

If you need a payment plan for the purchase of the phone, ClearPhone has partnered with Bread to give you 12 payments interest free or 24 – 36 payments with some interest rate I don’t remember. But you can find that out. The nice thing about purchasing your phone is at the end of the loan period, you own the phone.

ClearPhone also offers subscription plans for 2 years where the phone and the service are combined together. And at the end of the 2 years, you get a new phone. This is actually the best deal if you like having a shiny new phone every couple of years. The unlimited service is $80, so the phone subscription charge is the remainder and depends on the phone you want.

ClearUnited has also developed many of their own apps to incorporate the decentralizing of the data. They have many more that need to be transformed as well. But for now I use their email (ClearMail), not Google, I use their messenger (ClearSignal), not Google’s, and I use their contacts and web browser (ClearWeb), not Google’s. I don’t use Fakebook app, I access Facebook through the secure ClearWeb browser. ClearPhone doesn’t yet have travel navigation secured, so I use Google for that, but I’m sure it is on the way. So you will never have an app loaded on this phone without your permission and this phone empowers you to decide what parts of your data the apps store or share with others. No more tracking of the device and no more tracking apps! How relieving will that feel!?

Also some of their encrypted and decentralized apps include medical information and sharing apps as well as services building a network of non-traditional practitioners who are willing to work within the decentralized world. So you will see ClearMed with telehealth capabilities and ClearHealth with integrations to your personal monitoring devices. So this allows you to take advantage of the body sensor technology that exists today but to keep it securely on your device and share only that which you want to share to your medical professionals.

Now if you do decide to purchase, I only request you use my link so that I can get the credit. Also after you purchase if you think this is an awesome phone and an awesome company and would like to join the ranks of affiliate marketers such as I am, you may simply join as an affiliate and then you too can get paid to simply tell all your friends about your really cool super secure new phone!! You see Clear has decided not to use traditional marketing of their products. I mean this company is really cool and they have very conservative philosophies as you probably do as well. The only marketing they are using is affiliate marketing and it is working like a charm!! Their development is driven by purpose, that being providing technology to consumers that is protective, not invasive, technology that gives the control of the of the data and the apps back to you, the valued customer. Watch to this really inspiring video to see for yourself.

So what are you waiting for? Don’t walk, run, click, go to ClearUnited and choose your new ClearPhone! If you have any questions you can ask their customer support or leave them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Next post – Bad timing! How do I make my current phone secure? (Coming soon!)