Keep Them The ‘F’ Out: 10 Data Privacy Tools Government and Hackers Can’t Touch
I get it.
You want more wealth, but you want it to be safe. You want to enjoy a free life. And maintain your privacy.
That’s why whether you’re a location-independent entrepreneur or investor or just someone who wants more freedom and liberty in their life, there are certain tools that you shouldn’t live without.
So today, you’re going to learn about 10 tools every location-independent entrepreneur or investor, ex-pat, or freedom seeker needs to use if you want to create real personal, financial, and location-independent.
You’ll also discover my specific choices, so you know the exact services you should get started with today.
You’re not going to want to miss number 9.
Most people have never heard of it.
But it's likely the most important thing you can do for yourself and your family if you care about their future.
Building a location-independent life means staying connected to the world around you, whether for business or personal.
Most of us aren’t looking to live nomadic lives, unconnected in the jungle.
But unless you want big brother listening to every conversation, knowing your every step, and tracking your every dollar, you’re responsible for taking the necessary steps to keep your personal and business life private.
That’s why the most important tool you need to use daily is a Virtual Private Network, known more commonly as a VPN.
A VPN gives you online privacy and anonymity by creating a private network out of a public internet connection.
This blocks your IP address so no one can trace your online activity. That means no one knows your browsing habits or where you are browsing from.
They also can’t read your emails or passwords as you’re transmitting them across the web.
My personal choice in VPN is ExpressVPN or ProtonVPN.
They're easy to set up on your computer and all your devices, easy to use, and cost less than 13 bucks a month.
Of course, the most important thing you want to keep secure is your communications between yourself, your clients, your business partners, your friends, and your family.
The privacy should be a right.
But the fact is most email services aren’t that private.
Most of us know of someone whose email has been compromised or have heard of the multiple data breaches to big online cloud services.
But did you also know that Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo monitor your email to mine data for their adverting platforms?
And both the US and Canadian governments are known to spy on citizens’ email accounts.
Private mail servers like my favorite service, ProtonMail solves this issue by providing 2 different types of encryption.
The first is if someone sends you an email from a non-Proton address.
In this case, the mail is encrypted once it arrives at Proton mail, so no one other than the intended recipient can read it.
That includes ProtonMail.
Unfortunately, these emails, since they are sent from an unsecured server, can be intercepted and read before they get to ProtonMail.
The other encryption is when ProtonMail users send mail to other ProtonMail users.
In this case, the mail is end-to-end encrypted, meaning it can’t be decrypted in transit.
You can get started on ProtonMail completely free, and I 100% recommend them for any email you don’t want prying eyes to read.
Another type of communication you’ll want to use when you are location independent is instant messaging.
Unfortunately, most instant messenger services are far from secure.
Even the popular Whatsapp, which promises end-to-end encryption, has changed its terms of service to inform you that your information will be sent to its Facebook advertising platform.
Fortunately, there’s Signal.
Edward Snowden says he uses signals daily, so you know they’re secure.
It supports text, voice, audio, and video calling provides end-to-end encryption, and doesn’t store or share any of your personal information.
Speaking of privacy, why let Google track all your searches so they can report them back to the FBI and God knows who else?
Everyone knows they have a cozy relationship with the FBI and happily share private data all the time.
When you do a search on Google, Yahoo, or Bing, they share a ton of information about you with the site you’re visiting,
This includes your IP address, the terms you were searching for, and who referred you, which is the same as saying the site you visited before you did your search.
They also put small text files called cookies on your system, and then they read those files when you visit other sites, so they can serve up ads based on the information you were searching for.
That’s why I love DuckDuckGo, which is “the leading provider of privacy protection tools to help you seamlessly take back control of your online personal information.
They’ve provided a private alternative to Google for over a decade.”
Your searches remain private using the DuckDuckGo search engine instead of privacy invader Google. They don’t collect any data from you and block your IP address.
And they don’t fill your system with cookies that can follow you around the internet showing you ads based on your search history.
Another way you can get rid of annoying ads is by using an ad blocker.
Ad blockers are plugins added to your browser that detect ad code and either block or alter the ads.
They also stop the code that tracks you by blocking tracking cookies and sending other information back to the advertiser.
Actually, it's not even the advertiser that gets the information; the ad network, like Google, is mining all that data.
If you’re going to use Ad Blockers, I choose UBlock Origin.
It's relatively non-invasive and does a good job for you.
Ad blockers are a double edge sword, though.
First, Ad blockers can also disable functionality on websites you might want.
And next, content creators use ads to create revenue for their companies.
No revenue, no content creator.
So by using ad blockers, you’re inadvertently helping put your favorite content creators out of business and decreasing the quality of online information.
But there is an alternative to Ad Blockers to eliminate annoying ads you don’t want to see and eliminate the tracking while still supporting creators you love; it's the Brave Browser.
In the traditional advertising model, there are 3 parties. The advertiser, the publisher, and you, the user.
There is also a middleman like Google.
When an ad is shown, the middleman gets paid.
Incidentally, the middleman always makes the most.
When the ad is clicked, the publisher takes a piece.
And when you hopefully buy something, finally, the advertiser makes some revenue.
But do you know who doesn’t get paid?
You.
And you get tracked every step of the way.
Brave turns this model on its head with its blockchain-based browser that stops the annoying ads and trackers.
But you might wonder, how is it not killing the creators?
Simple, it allows the advertisers to pay you to watch their ads.
That way, you’re earning money in the form of a cryptocurrency called BAT just by giving attention to the advertisers you are interested in seeing.
I’ll talk more about Brave and earning BAT in another video.
Speaking of cryptocurrency, though.
Normally when you first buy it, it gets held in a custodial wallet.
Custodial wallets are like a bank accounts.
The exchange holds your funds, allowing you to deposit and withdraw just like a traditional bank.
But just like with a traditional bank, those funds aren’t yours. Someone else has control of them.
So you’ll want to get what’s known as a non-custodial wallet. Although most people just call it a wallet.
A wallet is a tool that allows you to store your cryptocurrency's private keys.
I won’t get into the details of that here, but it's what allows you to be your own bank and your own funds.
Wallets can be online, on your desktop computer, phone, or mobile device. They can also be kept on dedicated devices called hard wallets or on paper.
My recommendation, for both security and convenience, is the Trezor wallet.
I love my Trezor. It allows you to easily watch your balances and send and receive cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and thousands more.
And best of all, it's completely secure and easy to use.
But now that you are buying cryptocurrencies, storing some on exchanges, some in custodial wallets, and some in non-custodial wallets, you need a way to track your portfolio and see your real net worth in real-time.
For this, I recommend Kubera.
Kubera allows you to track your savings, bank accounts, crypto, investments and more in an interface that’s as easy to use as Excel or Google sheets but even better.
While you need to give read-only access to Kubera for them to connect and update your portfolio, they don’t store any of your banking credentials.
In addition, the data they do store is strongly encrypted on their servers, and even employees cannot see your data, other than a few key employees on a need-to-know basis, with strict data access auditing.
Kubera even offers an optional service to allow access to someone of your choice if you pass away.
But I recommend someone different for that.
This brings me to the most important tool in this video.
As an ambitious entrepreneur or investor who cares about privacy but also wants their family protected, you need to consider what happens if you are unexpectedly killed or incapacitated.
Does your family know where all of your crypto assets are?
Do they know the location of your wallets, private keys, gold, and even bank accounts?
Do you have a will, trusts, etc.?
Legacy Armor is the perfect tool to plan your legacy on your own or with a trusted advisor.
Every, and I mean every, location independent entrepreneur or investor or anyone with significant assets needs this service.
I’ll do a separate video about Legacy Armor. Still, they will ensure your family has access to your insurance, legal and financial information if and when needed.
They let you store your wills, legal documents, bank account information, and anything else you want in secure digital vaults and will email it to parties of your choice if something ever happens to you.
They will even check in with you periodically to make sure you are still alive and well, and will make sure the right people know about your financial and legal wishes if you can’t be found.
The link is in the description below.
The final tool you need in your arsenal ties all the previous tools together. And that’s a password manager.
Nothing is worse for your security than using the same password across all of the tools above, plus everything else you do daily. And the next biggest mistake is using passwords that are easy to remember because that also makes them easy to guess.
A password manager securely keeps track of all your passwords, so you don’t have to.
Passpack, the tool that I use and recommend, only requires you to remember 2 things.
A password that you can forget because you can click on the forgot password link.
And a secure passphrase.
You only know that passphrase. And is required to decrypt all of your passwords.
So it is a phrase you need to remember and keep safe.
It’s a good candidate to keep in your Legacy Armor vault because otherwise if you pass away, all of those passwords go with you.
Passpack also allows you to give access to certain passwords to certain users so they can log into shared accounts. Without ever exposing that password to the outside world.
These 10 tools will help you live the life you want while keeping you and your family safe and private.
And they are the most important tools you need to use today if you want complete personal, financial, and location independence.
Here are the links:
1. https://old.palmtreeresearch.com/expressvpn
2. https://old.palmtreeresearch.com/protonmail
3. https://old.palmtreeresearch.com/signal
4. https://old.palmtreeresearch.com/duckduckgo
5.https://old.palmtreeresearch.com/ublock
6. https://old.palmtreeresearch.com/brave
7. https://old.palmtreeresearch.com/trezor
8.https://old.palmtreeresearch.com/kubera
9. https://old.palmtreeresearch.com/legacyarmour
10. https://old.palmtreeresearch.com/passpack
Some of these are referral links, so if you choose to use any of them, it would help me out.