Meet Jason.
He’s a middle-aged, white guy just like me who has a working phone number, an email
address, and even a credit card number.
He’s also not a real person.
He’s one of my pseudonyms.
Before you jump away thinking, “I value privacy, but creating a pseudonym is a step
further than I’m willing to take”, consider this: has anybody ever asked you for a phone
number and you needed to give it to them even if you didn’t want to?
Or maybe you want to purchase something without that purchase being tied directly to your
identity?
What about something as simple as getting your hands on that 20% off coupon code without
opening yourself up to spammy emails or text messages all the time?
And to top it all off, what if I told you that you can solve all of these problems in
less than 2 minutes?
It’s possible and I’m going to show you how.
Pseudonyms are nothing new, and my favorite pseudonym was a guy named Richard Bachman.
You’ve probably heard of him before, even if you didn’t know it.
Check this out: Bachman authored eight novels, served a four-year stint in the Coast Guard,
settled in New Hampshire and ran a medium-sized dairy farm there.
He and his wife Claudia had one child who tragically drowned at the age of 6.
I mean, a serious back story here.
And before you start feeling sorry for him, remember that this a character; his photo
and his story are not real.
Bachman was the pen name for renowned horror fiction author Stephen King.
He’s certainly not the first author to use a pen name, but I love the fact that once
Bachman’s true identity was found out - by an observant bookstore clerk no less!
- Stephen King did two things.
First, he personally called the clerk and gave him an exclusive interview and two, Bachman
suddenly died in 1985 of, quote, “cancer of the pseudonym”.
I love it!
Now when we think of a pseudonym, I think this is usually what comes to mind.
It’s either a pen name for the rich and famous or an entirely new identity for a Jason
Bourne-like spy or somebody in protective custody.
But with the internet and the fact that our entire lives seem to be tied up and tracked
by pieces of data like our phone number or email address, the idea of a pseudonym takes
on a different meaning.
So for us common folk, what exactly is an internet pseudonym?
The reality is, a pseudonym does not have to be a full-blown identity with a backstory,
an AI-generated photo, and their own address, even though that’s entirely possible for
you to create if you want to.
That’s what my pseudonym Jason has, but for the most part I’ve come to the conclusion
that it’s mostly overkill.
For what you and I need, a pseudonym is simply a means of cloaking, or hiding, your data
from people who may not need to have your direct contact information.
That’s important to note, because I want to be clear that when we’re dealing with
government or law enforcement, pseudonyms can get you in big trouble.
That’s not what they’re used for.
But when a guy hits on you in a bar and asks for your number?
Or your grocery story wants you to sign up for their loyalty program?
You 100% should NOT give them your actual contact info.
That’s where a pseudonym can be valuable.
Now before I share some of the tools and tips to help you cloak your own data, you might
want to start by thinking about erasing some of your current data that’s already floating
around on the internet.
That’s where a service like DeleteMe comes in.
I’ve been using DeleteMe for years now and they’ve been a sponsor of All Things Secured
for a little over a year at this point.
I use their service to search for my data online - my actual phone number, my actual
address, that kind of stuff - and then make removal requests on my behalf.
Now before, I started trying to make these removal requests on my own, which is entirely
possible, but it took me about 15 to 20 minutes to figure out how to do it, fill out the form
and follow up to make sure the request had been honored.
When you multiply that by 20, 50, 80 plus data brokers that constantly scrape our data
to sell online, I’ve saved a lot of time and energy using DeleteMe.
Learn more about how you can erase your sensitive personal info off the internet and get a special
20% off by going to JoinDeleteMe.com/AllThingsSecured.
Ok, when you’re thinking about building a pseudonym, you need to figure out exactly
what kind of data you’re looking to protect.
Most of the time it’s going to be one or all of the big three: email, phone or payment
information.
You can throw address in there as well, and I’ve talked about using virtual addresses
for privacy in the past, but I’m going to set that aside for this video since I feel
like it’s an extreme use case.
There are two primary ways to create a pseudonym.
One is manual while the other is other is automated.
The manual process is exactly what you think it would be.
You come up with a random, fictitious name, register a Gmail account with that name, set
up a virtual credit card and then buy a second phone number.
I’m not talking about a true SIM card phone number, I mean more of a virtual burner number
like what I’ve talked about before on this channel.
They’re usually about $10 and work almost like Skype on your phone.
It’s all through an app.
With this, I would just keep a note on your phone or an identity in your password manager
so that you can easily access your pseudonyms info to give over when needed.
For fun, you can create an AI-generated fake profile photo from a place like this person
does not exist dot com, but really, unless you plan to go so far as to build fake social
media profiles for this pseudonym, which is really deep down the privacy rabbit hole,
this is way overkill.
I wouldn’t worry about it.
The more automated process of creating online pseudonyms, which also costs a bit of money,
is a niche that is being served by companies such as IronVest, MySudo, Cloaked, and Surfshark
just announced something they’re calling Alternative ID.
These kinds of apps allow you to create and organize different pseudonyms that you use
for different purposes.
Perhaps you have one online pseudonym for shopping, one for social media, one for things
that you sell online.
The idea here is not necessarily creating a full persona as much as it is just keeping
your cloaked data organized by how you plan to use it.
Honestly, this is generally how I’m starting to hide my contact data, even though Jason
still exists as my fictitious alter ego because sometimes I find it easier to just know the
email address of my pseudonym off the top of my head instead of having to create a new
one each time.
Same with a phone number.
I keep one dedicated second phone number that I’ve memorized and can easily provide for
any text verification codes required by companies that refuse to offer a better, stronger form
of security.
When I sign up for a webinar, it’s Jason who joins, not me.
When I give over my info to access Starbucks WiFi, they get Jason’s data, not mine.
As with anything related to privacy, there are different levels of paranoia and you have
to know the limit of how deep you want to go.
But cloaking the email, phone number and credit card info you give out online is first of
all easier than most people think - which I hope I’ve convinced you of in this video
- and provides legitimate protection.
Let me know in the comments how you plan to create your pseudonym and then visit JoinDeleteMe.com/AllThingsSecured
to remove the data that already exists about you online.
I even did a review of their service after using them for a year so you can see what
it looks like.