VoIP 101: Hiding your location

SMS and regular phone calls are horrible.  It’s completely insecure, location dependent, isn’t good at international calls, and there’s NO BENEFIT over end-to-end encrypted messengers.  Only through pure propaganda has the population been conditioned to accept this surveillance and control.  But IF you HAVE to use SMS then use VoIP.

What is VoIP?

VoIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol.  It’s regular phone calls and SMS but through the internet, instead of a cellphone tower.

What are the benefits to VoIP?

There’s a lot of benefits:
1) It’s cheaper, especially in international situations
2) It hides your physical location
3) When you travel to another country, you can keep the same number.  VoIP is great for business.

____________

Why isn’t VoIP more popular then?

Propaganda.  Why isn’t cryptocurrency more popular?

____________

What are NOT the benefits to VoIP?

It does NOT hide or encrypt the messages.  Phone companies can still read what you write and hear what you say.  When you pay for VoIP with cryptocurrency you hide your identity up until the person you’re talking to says it or texts it.

____________

What is JMP.Chat?

This is one of MANY VoIP providers that resells Twillio service.  Twillio is a large enterprise-focused VoIP provider.  Some other “privacy” providers, (such as Hushed), will resell Twillio for Bitcoin, but what’s unique about JMP Chat is that you don’t interact with Twillio or even JMP directly.  Instead, they allow you to assign your service to an XMPP or Matrix account on a completely different server that you can self-host.  This is more decentralized and slightly more private, in that JMP Chat can’t even see your VPN IP.  They just see your XMPP or Matrix server.  But other than that, they can still read and hear everything.

____________

I’m confused, who can see what exactly?

If you assign JMP Chat to an XMPP server, then they don’t even see your VPN IP, they see the XMPP server.

You → VPN → XMPP Server → JMP Chat/Twillio VoIP → Receiving Regular Phone Carrier

So here’s what each person sees:

The computer’s ISP or cell data provider giving you service just sees a VPN tunnel.

JMP Chat & Twillio see ALL content, but just your XMPP server’s IP.

The person you’re talking to just sees a regular phone number.

So all you’re really hiding compared to SMS, is your physical location from the phone number provider.

____________

Should I bind JMP to XMPP or Matrix?

Definitely XMPP because JMP is doing it with XMPP and then offering a BRIDGE to Matrix.  So it’s not going to be as good an experience quality-wise with Matrix.  If you want audio calls then definitely XMPP, because Matrix can’t even do JMP phone calls.

____________

What XMPP Client do you recommend?

If you’re using Linux,
Then Dino.  But Gajim is a 2nd option.
Gajim audio calls work for Linux only, and NOT on Windows.

If you’re using Android,
Monocles has good texting sync with Linux Dino.
But Cheogram is excellent on it’s own.

If you’re using Windows,
Gajim is great for texts, but can’t do audio call for Windows.  You have two audio call options:
Option 1) Mov.im in a Web browser, the pro is this is easy.  The con is they see your password because it’s in a browser.
Option 2) Unofficial release of Dino for Windows, which I haven’t personally tried and may have problems:
https://github.com/LAGonauta/dino/releases

If you’re using iPhone,
You have two choices
Option 1) Snikket’s iOS app,
https://snikket.org/app/ios/
Option 2) Siskin, which Snikket is based on,
https://siskin.im/

If you’re using Apple/Mac computers,
Your 2 choices are:
Option 1) the same mov.im in a browser as Windows
Option 2) Beagle.im

____________

Conclusion
At Simplified Privacy, we HIGHLY recommend VoIP.  You NEVER want to use service from the cellphone tower.  However, even VoIP SMS sucks when compared to real XMPP, Signal, Session, SimpleX, or even Telegram’s end-to-end.