How to hide yourself from Google and cell phone carriers

The problem with being private is that it increasingly means that you have to choose to drop out of society. You would never let the government put a tracking device on you, but you may be carrying a cell phone that tracks your location. You don’t want the government monitoring your internet usage, but Google collects data on you.

Cell phone or Google

Since most people find they can’t live without a cell phone or Google, they grudgingly accept that they will lose their privacy and become trackable. That doesn’t sit well with Moxie Marlinspike, a security hacker with the Institute for Disruptive Studies. He is a common speaker at security events, and he spoke at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas today about how to give users more choices by allowing them to hide from both Google and cell phone carriers without losing access to their services.

Marlinspike (pictured) has set up two experimental services that allow you to stay anonymous and still use the internet. One service circumvent’s Google’s data collection methods. Google itself “anonymizes” search engine data after nine months by deleting the last eight digits of Internet Protocol address data. But Google gathers a lot of data on you through Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Checkout, and Google Health. You have to be logged in to use Gmail, and so that gives Google the ability to track you for advertising purposes.

“Make no mistake,” Marlinspike said. “They are a surveillance business. Their intent is not the same as the government eavesdroppers. The effect is the same. Who knows more about citizens in their own country, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, or Google? Why is Google not scary? Because we choose to use it.”

The Google service without being tracked

You can then use the Google service without being tracked. It has been available for about six months and about 80,000 people are using it. Meanwhile, Marlinspike has also set up a way to do voice-over-internet-protocol VOIP calls on cell phones without being identified. The system, dubbed Whisper Systems, lets you make calls (via RedPhone) or send text messages (TextSecure) without being tracked. RedPhone creates encrypted phone calls so no one can listen into your conversation. TextSecure also encrypts your text messages.