DownUnder The Cloak: Volume 01, Issue 03



A month of privacy pursuits and purposeful planning

After a busy couple of months that included hosting the Bitcoin and Blockchain Fairs in Sydney and Melbourne, I’m glad that these past few weeks have allowed time for research and planning.

While waiting for new listing confirmations and finalising negotiations for new payment integrations, I’ve been able to spend time with my business mentor to evaluate my focus and where I can best add value.

I’ve also found time to follow up with new connections and churn through some groundwork. It has been really rewarding and I can’t wait to see the fruits of our team’s labour. Especially since getting more involved with my fellow CloakCoin Coordinators around the globe.

In this month’s update, I’m going to keep things brief. I want to share a few insights from my recent privacy overhaul, details of some major privacy concerns in Australia, and tips on how you can show your support as a Cloak community member. #CloakFamStrong!

CloakCoin Whitepaper Audio Edition Available Now

In response to requests from our community, we’ve taken the initiative to record an audiobook version of our CloakCoin-Enigma Whitepaper V2.1.

You can listen to the whitepaper right here, or via your favourite podcast app (link below)



It was an absolute pleasure to be asked by the core team to go ahead and record the audio for this initiative. This especially appealed to me after meeting a vision impaired privacy and crypto enthusiast at a recent event.

The audio is available for download on all popular podcasting apps. You can find quick links to your preferred service here: https://anchor.fm/cloakcoin

I’m also going to be presenting CloakCoin’s global updates on YouTube, for those of you who like video. Really excited about having the opportunity to do so!

Privacy Matters Now More Than Ever

I’m very fortunate to call Australia home, but I’m a privacy activist for a reason. We’re part of the UKUSA Agreement, essentially one of the 5 Eyes of Global Mass Surveillance. It’s no surprise that discussions at most meetups and events I go to steer themselves toward concerns around privacy.

“While Five Eyes countries have agreed to not spy on each other as adversaries, leaks by Snowden have revealed that some Five Eyes members monitor each other’s citizens and share intelligence to avoid breaking domestic laws that prohibit them from spying on their own citizens.”



This month, Australian news headlines were crammed with stories regarding a ‘new’ government initiative called My Health Record. Following a failed first attempt at getting the public to opt-in, the government decided to approach adoption from a new angle.

OPT-OUT…

Many Australians have recognised that a huge centralised database of key health information for every citizen poses a serious privacy and security threat. Somewhat a goldmine for identity theft; the risk completely outweighs the reward.



It’s disappointing that our own government have betrayed our trust by creating a digital health record by default. Despite allowing for a 3 month opt-out period, it seems for some, their profile was created anyway.



Worse still, when a project like this presents such a vast attack surface for personal data breaches (approx 900,000 access points via health practitioners etc) why didn’t the government leverage blockchain?

Especially when you consider they’ve already successfully done so with Australia Post’s Digital iD? When you factor in the 2.6 billion data breaches that occurred globally in 2017 alone, this kind of oversight is inexcusable.

Perhaps this goes part and parcel with the conflicting agendas of a bipartisan government masquerading as democracy. I’m just glad there’s organisations like CryptoAUSTRALIA working hard to promote privacy and digital rights. Looking forward to collaborating with them in future. Great work on the #MyHealthRecord #OptOut meetup by their team!

Protecting Your Personal Data

If you’re interested in the CloakCoin project, you obviously value your privacy and understand that our personal data has become a commodity.

Consumers trade convenience for privacy and big corporations exploit their personal data for profit.

Privacy costs often become clear only after they’ve already been paid.

People like Mark Zuckerberg make billions from the sale of your personal data and yet ZERO dollars are distributed to Facebook’s users.

The rich and powerful certainly value privacy and it’s increasingly considered a luxury good. In fact, the Zuck himself purchased all four properties around the perimeter of his home to provide a barrier of privacy.

Why do so many of us continue to treat our personal information with such little respect? Why do we consider it worthless, then the powers that be value it so highly?

I’d like to suggest those of you who aren’t already, start using pseudonyms. Perhaps if we all make the change, we can reassign our data the appropriate value. I’ve been testing out the idea of having a ‘Sudo’ for each aspect of my online life.

Check out the MySudo app here: https://mysudo.com If you’re in Australia, the MySudo app isn’t yet working here, so try out the previous version they’re rolling over from: https://sudoapp.com

I’ve been using my ‘Sudos’ every time I’m asked for my personal details for marketing purposes. Most notably, I used one to take advantage of a discount offer in a large clothing chain, while avoiding a barrage of spam.

Fake name, fake email, fake phone number. Although, from within the app, email, SMS and phone calls are all fully functional!

How To Support CloakCoin On Auto-Pilot

If you’re part of the CloakCoin community and would love to help us grow, you should totally try out IFTTT — If This, Then That.

The app is basically an automation tool for non-coders. You can do all sorts of things and I’ve been showing a few members of the Cloak family how to make it work for them. I’d like to make a suggestion.

  1. Head to the site and Sign-up: https://ifttt.com
  2. Get started with this Applet: https://ifttt.com/applets/DNUjCx8q-retweet-all-tweets-form-user (think of it like a recipe)
  3. Configure the Username to watch as: CloakCoin



Through connecting to your Twitter account, this will automatically retweet all tweets from CloakCoin. It’s something small and only takes a few minutes to setup. But this kind of community involvement really helps us all to grow together.

While you’re at it, start conversations around privacy and get talking with people, warning them of the threats we all face from an ideological standpoint. If they’re interested, welcome them to the Cloak family by inviting them to join our official Telegram group here: https://t.me/cloakproject

I’ll Be In Brisbane August 9th — 13th

If you’re in Brisbane please get in touch with me as I’ll be staying in beautiful BrisVegas for four nights and five days.

Thursday I will be checking out the crypto-friendly Brisbane Airport and attending a couple of meetings. If anyone is free in the afternoon or evening, I’d love to do an impromptu meetup!



Friday to Sunday I will be attending the BLOCKConscious Summit at 315 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley. https://cryptomasterminds.org/events/blockconscious



Sunday night and Monday I’m free, so I’ll be looking to see what’s happening in Blockchain around the river city. Hopefully I’ll get to meet some local crypto crew!

Until next time, keep pursuing privacy and financial freedom my friends!

Lese alles