Several years ago, I never dreamed I would ever create web apps on the Internet, or that they would actually end up being useful. I make them for myself to use and then share with the world. I do monetize them because if I gave away everything for free, I’d be unable to keep any of it running. I hope the people who come across it find their own use for it. I have begun turning my business of developing web apps as an advocate to the right to feel secure and enjoy the privacy that everyone once had.
One such tool that I created in 2015 was called MyPost, influenced by Pen.io, and has since seen the growing list of other services that followed, of being able to publish something on the Internet anonymously and privately without having to share any personal information. Most sites where you want to publish a blog or article or information require a sign up with an account, revealing your email address, and often other information about you. MyPost was created to eliminate this issue. No account is required. No sign up or registration is necessary. It does something so simple without requiring any revealing information: gets a post up on the Internet in seconds. Sometimes that is all people want to do. The focus for building something like this was privacy.
Privacy is a human right that most of us take for granted. We seem to be losing more and more of our rights to privacy every year, without even noticing it. Imagine having to live in a neighborhood where everyone could just walk into your house because privacy doesn’t matter. You can also imagine a house with a bunch of strangers who ate your food, watched your television, and hung out all the time, even entering your room whenever they felt like it. Same concepts. None of us would like it. Most of us have secrets and keep secrets and might not even tell our parents, children, girlfriends, boyfriends, wives or husbands about some of ours secrets.
Those secrets are part of our privacy and something we value. Privacy is really the most essential human right that we can have. You lose this right completely if you are incarcerated. If you are a woman, you technically lose some of this right when the children start knocking on the door as you use the bathroom. Can’t you just get, like, 5 minutes alone to poop?! In the world, privacy is still something most of us have, and we value it greatly. Plenty of people fight for what they call freedom, but within freedom is that ultimate gift: the right to privacy.
Could we even live in a world where there was no privacy? Could you imagine such a place existing? Where everyone, or maybe even a group of people knew everything about everyone and everything? It happens everyday, as part or most of our lives are on the Internet where we conduct business or carry on personal affairs. As we are seduced by the easiness of the Internet, the Internet is gulping down petabytes of data, which someday will become exabytes, zettabytes and yottabytes. We freely give up our information without a second thought and do nothing about it.
Providing the tools to help people with automation and privacy is something that NoteToServices is striving to provide people with. We are certainly not the only company that actually realizes the importance of what privacy means. The name, NoteToServices, was actually named after a few web apps created that are still in beta: they deliver notes to all of your services. Like all companies, we evolved beyond just delivering notes to services, but the name has just stuck for what we do or were focusing on. Added into the mix was the delivery of those notes, whether it is an actual phone call, a text message, or an email, and how securely and efficiently those messages get delivered.
The other day I was speaking with a customer of one of those services, and it reminded me of why NoteToServices exists and that there are people out there who do actually care about their privacy. When speaking to that person, I had noticed they entered in their email, which was ProtonMail, known for its secure encrypted email platform based in Switzerland.
I also noticed they had used a pre-paid credit card to subscribe to the web app. I asked them for more information about their being so private and why they were using my service. For chat, they were using Telegram, along with a VPN, which they would not reveal the name of. A private phone is being used, while my service was providing the virtual numbers. Whatever this person is using even hid the country they were in. The only information I had about them was when they typed their email address in to speak with me on chat support. This person was essentially using all services in their life which allows them to appear “off the grid” to an extent, at least in terms of privacy.
The service is Call Me Private which provides an unlimited amount of virtual numbers which privatizes phone numbers for both incoming and outgoing calls. Local and toll-free numbers are available. One account could be used for a hundred employees or one hundred accounts could be used for each individual employee. Either way, the service was created to protect real phone numbers from ever being known. Essentially, a virtual number service is a blanket that is wrapped around a phone number so only the blanket is seen, and never what is underneath.
Anyone receiving a call from you never gets to know your real phone number. The number they are calling is the virtual number you give to them. The process forwards the call to your real phone number so the virtual number is a service that acts as a bridge or tunnel between you and the caller or you and the recipient of your call.
An additional service, which can be “bridged” with Call Me Private so that you can use the number for calling and texting is Text Privately, which will not only secure your text messages, but provide you with a virtual number that can be used to send and receive text messages. The person who receives your text will never know your real phone number and the person who sends you a text message never actually sees your real phone number.
Call Me Private and Text Privately add anonymity to you and anyone who interacts with you. The “trace” of your phone only leads back and forth with a virtual number, never revealing who is being called or what is being said or texted. Unless specified, the services make all attempts to keep as little data about you as possible.
With the rise in spam and scam callers who have learned your phone number, it becomes an inevitable nuisance. For those with a virtual number, the ability to give out that virtual number and then change it every month without having to pay extra fees will help keep the spam and scam callers away, as the number eventually resorts to a number no longer in service. Renting numbers on a monthly basis has never been easier!
With Call Me Private and Text Privately, you can be from any state in the United States; you can have an unlimited amount of numbers for calling and texting. Your privacy becomes yours to own again as a human right. We may not be able to prevent those calls and texts from coming through to our phones, but there exists tools to join in and fight back.
The reason scammers exist is because it is working for them. The fight against them along with all corporations that have accidentally or purposely lost or sold your information and have not faced any repercussions should tell you exactly how Congress and lawmakers feels about the issue. As these companies barely apologize, they are not fined or charged with anything, and if they are, you get nothing out of it. The governments, lawyers, and anyone daring enough to sue and win likely do though.
Data breaches and hacks happen all the time with most going unreported or covered up for years until they finally get revealed by a whistleblower or rebel. These corporations certainly claim to protect your data and many of them make their best attempts to do so. However, taking your own initiative to understand what privacy and security means for your life and doing something about it is the best way to ultimately protect yourself.
THERE IS NO ONE PROTECTING YOU BETTER THAN YOU. THERE IS NO ONE THAT CARES ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION OR YOUR PRIVACY MORE THAN YOU. YOU NEED TO BE PRO-ACTIVE IN PROTECTING YOUR OWN INFORMATION — INTERNET CONNECTION, EMAIL, CHAT, TEXT MESSAGES, PHONE LINES, PHONE NUMBERS, AND EVEN YOUR CREDIT CARDS.
TAKE ACTION NOW AND START WINNING BACK YOUR PRIVACY BECAUSE THAT IS YOUR HUMAN RIGHT.
Image Sources: Google