9 Secrets to Be INVISIBLE ONLINE (without going off the grid)

Can you be COMPLETELY invisible online? The short answer to that is no, you can’t! HOWEVER, there are steps you can take to mask your online identity and further protect your online privacy. In this video, Josh walks us through 9 secrets on how to be invisible online.

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Increasing your online security takes minimal effort and it does not need to expensive. The following are 9 simple steps you can take to become more invisible online:

1. Use Your Passport: It contains lesser information about you. The lesser information you share, the better!
2. Hide Your Home Address: Take advantage of tools and services that allow you to mask your personal data. For example, instead of giving out your home address, you can provide your virtual address through Traveling Mailbox. Learn more about how to hide your home address in this video.
3. Mask Your Phone Number:  You can mask your number with services like Hushed or Google Voice, which basically screens all texts and calls through an app on your phone. Hushed allows you to send and receive text and phone calls without actually giving away your real phone number. Meanwhile, if your current number is already overwhelmed with spam, you could port it over to Google Voice, start over with a new number from your mobile service provider, and then screen everything through the Voice app.
4. Mask Your Email: If you have any kind of Apple iCloud subscription, you automatically get to use their Hide My Email feature, which is explained in iOS 15 privacy features video. There are also other standalone services like FastMail or Blur by Abine that do the same thing for a small fee.
5. Mask Your Credit Card: Services like Privacy.com, Abine Blur or Revolut allow you to create virtual credit cards to pay for things online. Some virtual credit cards, like those from Privacy.com, can even allow you to use any name and address for billing so that you don’t have to give away your actual name and address.
6. Delete Your Data: Did you know that a good portion of your personal information is currently floating around the internet? But don’t worry! You can scrub off this data yourself or use a service like DeleteMe that can do the job for you. Find out more about how DeleteMe works in this video.
7. Hide Social Media: One extreme option is for you to delete ALL your social media accounts. If this is too extreme, you can take simple steps such as making your Instagram private, locking down your Facebook profile, and just being careful with what information you choose to share online.
8. Use Brave Browser:  Brave offers incredible privacy right out of the box. It stops services like Google, Facebook, and advertisers from following you around the internet.
9. Use a VPN or TOR: Use a virtual private network or a Tor connection. These are two different tools and I’ve explained the differences in this TOR vs VPN video, but the end result is that it allows you to cover your tracks as you browse through the internet. For the VPN, I use a service like ExpressVPN. For the Tor connection, there’s one available within the Brave browser.

With information brokers on the lookout to sell our personal information, there’s no wonder why online privacy has become an important subject of discussion. So, don’t forget to mask your online identity to help you be more secure online!