hello my name is bradley and welcome to
sums up a channel about how to survive
in the online jungle how many people do
you think go missing every year
well last year over half a million
people went missing in the united states
alone
if all of these people were to gather in
one place you'd probably have a city the
size of
atlanta or sacramento now this is an
enormous shocking figure but just take a
look at this graph
as it turns out in 2021 it's a lot
harder to actually disappear than say
a quarter of a century ago in 1996
980 000 people never returned home
that's actually double today's figure
why well
the answer is actually quite simple
nowadays we leave
much more of a trace and by and large
it's thanks to these things to show just
how little privacy there is in our lives
i actually want to conduct a little bit
of an experiment
i want to figure out how to disappear
completely and never be found again
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actually before i embark on disappearing
from digital world i'd actually like to
clear up a few things first
number one and most importantly i'm not
wanted by interpol
and i don't owe any money to the banks
or to the mafia
i'm a normal brit with a good reputation
and my finances are fairly in order
it's just that the time has come to
change my life entirely
so no mi6 won't be chasing me once i
disappear
and i won't be faking my own death so i
don't think the police will be that
interested in me either however
my family might actually hire a team of
private detectives to hunt me down and
that's
who i'm going to be hiding from the
private detectives
she in fact if i were to disappear in
japan for instance there would actually
be dozens of legitimate companies that
would help me get the job done
pretty strange i mean for a modest fee
they'd effectively help me move out in
secret and come up with a new identity
and biography
every year thousands of japanese men and
women
vanish without a trace
unfortunately i'll be going this road
alone without the help of any
backstreet japanese agencies and before
the new me enters the world
i'll effectively have to erase as many
traces of my former self
as i physically can
all of us reveal countless amounts of
data about ourselves
where we go what we do what we enjoy as
well as our wrongdoings
practically everything that we've ever
photographed downloaded
supported criticized commented upon or
even ignored
is actually reflected in our digital
history and one of the most important
components here is that the data about
us is actually
publicly available by social media and
that's really easy to check
there's actually a website called delete
me and you can use this website to enter
your full name and the city in which you
reside
and in just a few minutes you'll be met
with a very very unpleasant surprise now
the good news is that this check
is basically free to conduct the bad
news is that
well first of all the data is no longer
stored on social media platforms blogs
or websites
instead it now resides in the databases
of data brokers
you can request that the data broker
deletes your data right but
this process is long and difficult and
there are actually no guarantees that
the data will actually be deleted from
the systems
so with these two things in mind i've
actually chosen a different route
now i'm not going to be deleting my
social media profiles or writing to
data brokers instead i'll actually be
tainting my existing personal data
basically i'll dilute all the
information about myself with various
kinds of spam for instance
i will start adding absolute randomness
to my friends list and then i'll add
the friends of those randomers and then
i'll start joining random groups on
facebook or
cramming my bio with a range of
inexplicable hobbies and interests
i'll also start reposting things that in
no way reflect who i am
or what i do and i'll fill my photo
galleries with faces of people
who don't even exist right this is all
effectively
spamming my profiles of course
intelligence agencies would likely have
the resources to determine which data
about me is true
and which data is fake but that's not
who i'm hiding from remember an ordinary
private detective
would only have access to publicly
available information such as my social
media profile which i'm spamming heavily
and if you actually want to visualize
how difficult it will be to delete your
data from these social media platforms
well backgroundchecks.org can help you
with that
see on this site you'll basically see a
list of the social media platforms where
deleting your data will be the most
difficult if not impossible
and if you don't plan on disappearing
this site will give you something to
consider
next time you decide to create a new
social media profile
so similar to what i did with my social
media profiles i'll be intentionally
spamming my email
i can actually sign up to a large number
of dating websites for instance
maybe i'll launch some free ads or
create some websites on tilde
where i'll basically offer random stuff
for really low prices
the point is that i'll be using my
existing email as the contact in these
endeavors
and before i truly disappear i'll reply
to as
many of these resulting emails as i can
to create this
strange backlog of random emails right
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not only this but on the day of my
disappearance i'll be maxing out the
number of password reset attempts on my
accounts
and additionally i'll remove any
recovery phone numbers or email
addresses that are actually attached to
them i'll also change the answers to my
recovery questions with
absolute gibberish that is impossible to
memorize either on my part
or for anyone else to figure out the
idea here is to lock the door
take out the key throw it in a lake and
forget about it forever
so let's talk about your favorite
devices right smartphones laptops and
tablets
these guys can become your worst enemies
as you try to
escape from your former life let's start
with my laptop
now regardless of how attached i may be
to my old trusty
notebook here i'm sadly going to have to
leave it behind
my computer is effectively just as
unique as any person on the planet i
mean the processor the hard disk and
memory cards are
unique identifiers of the computer
itself and they are
accessible to programs that have their
serial numbers for instance
therefore every computer leaves a trace
in that one way or another
means the computer can be identified so
i've got two options
either destroy my favorite laptop or
basically create a
false footprint of it i think i'll go
with the second option
and the first thing i need to do in this
case is to install a bunch of crypto
related software
including guides and instructions all
related to
bitcoin speculation and i'm actually
going to have to buy some bitcoin to get
this done
why well i have to generate this false
market activity by moving various
cryptocurrencies back and forth from
different wallets and things
but at the same time i'll actually start
researching various cryptocurrency
websites and
inquiring about mining equipment so as
to give off the impression that i'm
actually interested in crypto now this
will be the false motive for my escape
even for high-level law enforcement the
crypto market can seem
not only abstract and criminal but that
out strange
so just let them think that i ran into
some problems paying off some crypto
debts right
and i just took off somewhere i mean
this would be enough to divert the
police for instance
but a private detective on the other
hand might investigate this lead
that's why i will be leaving my old
laptop behind
i'll change the password to something
really easy
one of my parents birthdays would work
fine so they can get in perhaps i'll
even google a few places which i
certainly don't plan on visiting
and i'll spend some time on home rental
websites for instance in those regions
i'll
even look up a few bus schedules some
shopping malls and a few maps
of those regions and while i'm at it
i'll take a look and see how many cctv
cameras there are
in each city and thankfully i won't be
going to china or london as a result
where the amount of surveillance cameras
is just truly shocking
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now my plan of escape currently only
exists in my head
and i'm not going to research any
aspects of my escape on
any of my devices or even things like a
public computer at the library because
you know someone might take interest in
what's on your screen for instance
instead i'll probably go around some
local bookshops and take a look at some
guides into other countries and cities
and then on the day of my escape
i'll just pick one of those destinations
at random right yes
randomness is indeed part of the plan
here now when it comes to my dear
smartphone
i certainly have a lot of work to do
before the
day of my escape i mean first of all i
have to learn how to forget my phone
regularly
both at work and at home the reason for
that is because telecom companies keep
track of the movements of their
customers
therefore when i'm walking around with
my phone in my pocket
i'm being tracked constantly and this
doesn't matter if i have the latest
iphone or an old nokia brick
any phone regularly triangulates your
position now accessing this information
is of course
very difficult i mean even if you're law
enforcement
you'll start to jump through several
hoops and rings of bureaucratic hell
in order to get this information
nonetheless anonymous cellular tracking
data
is commercially available and all of
this data is collected by these various
applications installed on your phone
including
maps and online shopping apps for
instance technically speaking this data
is indeed
anonymous however if this data reveals
a pattern it is theoretically possible
to trace it back to me personally i mean
think about it right
how many people in your building commute
the exact same place that you do
every single day were your neighbors at
the same company christmas party that
you were at
last year do you see what i'm getting
out here i mean if you regularly visit
the same four or five places
you're effectively creating a unique
digital footprint
and this can be traced right back to you
now even if the data underpinning it
is indeed anonymous now it is enough to
know where one lives works and has lunch
or even shops to figure out who they are
just based on
anonymous cellular tracking data the
scariest part is that it's actually
perfectly legal
and not too difficult to access this
sort of data recently a couple of
journalists from the new york times
demonstrated this
and obviously for the private detective
hunting you down accessing this
data should be a piece of cake therefore
in the lead up to my escape i'll have to
follow
one important rule i'll have to
regularly
leave my telephone behind and i'll
actually use the time away from my phone
to do
kind of important stuff like regularly
withdrawing small amounts of
money from random atms around the city
but not too much at once obviously so as
to not raise any red flags with the bank
so if i stick to withdrawing small sums
at random intervals
i should be in the clear also at some
point while i'm away from my phone
i'll need to buy a simple old-school
cell phone you know the kind with actual
buttons right
and a new sim card but whatever i do i
cannot turn it on
or even charge it i can't even take out
the phone from the box until i'm at
least 200
miles into my escape at no point ever
should my old phone and my new phone be
turned on
at the same time in the same place on
the day of my escape i will remove the
sim card and sd card of my phone and
literally
throw it into the nearest lake if
anything pond at the local
park should suffice or at the very least
a dirty river
might be all right as well and then i'll
take the sim card and sd card and throw
them into a sewer drain somewhere right
no one's gonna find this
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so also i'll have to say goodbye to the
bank because now i'm part of the very
small minority of people these days who
don't use banking services
my transactions now on will be on a
purely
cash basis and the plus side it will be
much easier to pay
and deal with landlords and i really
won't be leaving any trace in that
respect i'll also probably keep some
modest savings in crypto
and even if i run into problems with
paying for stuff in bitcoin
i can always use the bitcoin to buy
electronics which i can then
in turn pawn for cash and
this point however causes me a bit of a
problem i mean
how do i keep the passwords to my crypto
while it's secure and how do i ensure
that no one can make use of them
if i lose them for instance two one six
four
two zero one nine eight nine and that
little lady
is pie to a thousand places well here
i'll follow the principle that the best
hiding place
is in plain sight so to that avail i'll
purchase a bunch of
neutral photographs into which i'll
disguise the keys to my crypto wallets
with the help of steganography now this
method is based on the idea that
information is not only encrypted but
it's so hidden from plain sight
the text can be inserted into a file
such as a photo or video for instance
i mean here look at this first glance
this looks like an ordinary photo
right that's no different to this one
but in reality i've actually inserted
multiple pages from this very script
into the first one
who would have thought that from such an
ordinary picture you could extract so
much information
now we are finding ourselves really at
the dawn of a new world
digital technologies now have the
ability to create unique portraits out
of all of us
researchers have learned to identify
individual drivers based on how they
execute turns for instance in the
manner in which they turn the steering
wheel and even how they apply pressure
to the pedals
advanced recognition systems can
identify us based on how we
type by analyzing the pauses in between
the keys we press
and i still haven't scratched the
surface of biometrics as well as face
and
voice recognition systems that we'll
actually get to in one of the upcoming
videos
now as i said goodbye i'd like you to
think about living in a world with no
privacy whatsoever
maybe it's not too late to run away and
start all over again
you