Cloaked Review: Privacy Nirvana or Overpriced Hype?

Cloaked Review: Privacy Nirvana or Overpriced Hype? In this episode of Silent Mode Cafe, we explore whether Cloaked lives up to its promise of being the ultimate privacy tool or if it’s just another pricey subscription. Cloaked offers features like burner emails, disposable phone numbers, virtual cards, and data removal from broker sites, all designed to safeguard your identity. We break down how it works, highlight its strengths like its all-in-one convenience and data scrubbing power, and address its drawbacks, including its cost and competition from free or cheaper alternatives like Firefox Relay, Privacy.com, and DeleteMe. Is Cloaked worth it for ultimate privacy and convenience? Or are you better off managing multiple tools on your own? Tune in to find out and decide if this “identity firewall” is right for you. Privacy shouldn’t cost a fortune—or should it? Let’s talk!

#virtualcards #privacyapps #onlineprivacy #cloakedreview #emailaliases

CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Intro
00:50 - What is Cloaked? Privacy Protection
01:18 - How Does Cloaked Work? Functionality Explained
04:55 - Pros and Cons of Cloaked
06:36 - Cloaked vs Competitors: Comparison Analysis
09:52 - Is Cloaked Worth It? Value Assessment
11:38 - Outro
12:28 - No Information Sharing: Benefits of Cloaked
12:35 - Stay in Silent Mode: Privacy Features
12:39 - Closing Remarks

Transcript

Introducing Cloaked: The Privacy Bundle

Speaker 1 0:00

Okay , welcome back to Silent Mode Cafe , where we sip coffee and break down privacy tools made for real life , not just hackers in hoodies , I'm Salah .

Speaker 2 0:13

And I'm Vivek . Today we'll discuss Cloaked C-L-O-A-K-E-D . It's a privacy bundle that gives you burner emails , burner phone numbers , virtual cards and even data removal from broker sites .

Speaker 1 0:29

Interesting . Well , we'll explain what it is , how it works and where it slaps Okay , I'm trying here and definitely where it stumbles . By the end you'll know if Cloaked is worth your cash or just clever marketing . Vivek Right Ever signed up for a website then got spammed .

Speaker 2 0:55

What if your email , phone and credit card were all fake and no one knew ?

Speaker 1 1:00

but you Well . Today we're diving into Cloaked the app that promises firewalling your identity . Basically , it's promising that it's a privacy nirvana . Or is it just another subscription ? You forget ?

Speaker 2 1:16

about .

How Cloaked Works in Real Life

Speaker 1 1:19

Well , so cloaked calls itself an identity firewall . Let's translate that you stop handing out your real info and instead you use aliases that are created by cloaked , such as your email address , just for one site . So imagine each site will have its own email address , Phone numbers that forward but can vanish . So if you find that number being called 100 times a day , just remove it . A username that can never be traced back to you . And soon , virtual cards for one-time payments .

Speaker 2 2:05

So it's got quite a bit of a laundry list there . Yeah , it does . At least it's promising a lot of cool stuff , right ? So it's like carrying a digital decoy wallet If someone breaks in , they get nothing valuable because you're using aliases , something like that you used to see in James Bond movies . That's right .

Speaker 1 2:24

That is actually pretty valuable and if you start getting spam on that email , just burn that area . It's poof clean . Inbox Plus .

Speaker 2 2:36

Cloaked , goes on offense . It scrubs your real info from over 120 data broker sites , those companies selling your home address , family tree and so on and they added a new function .

Speaker 1 2:51

Now they throw in a million-dollar identity theft insurance . Basically , they're aiming at the privacy . Swiss Army knife . Similar to LifeLock , right , yeah , that's the first thing , but it's not monitoring your identity like your credit information , but there's a bit of an overlap between the two just in the insurance side , while so LifeLock kind of gives you real-time updates when your personal identity has been stolen this kind of . I can definitely use this while I have LifeLock .

Speaker 2 3:32

The way I see it , yeah , there would be two adjacent products that you'd have . You'd have Cloak and LifeLock if Cloak does what it's supposed to do . So how does it ? Actually work flow if Cloak does what it's supposed to do , so how does it actually work ? So , in real life , if you're signing up for , let's say , an online shop , you can use Cloak email If you want to go on websites such as Craigslist or Hinge you can use the Hinge Cloak phone number and then if you want to pay without exposing your debit card , I believe they have a payment system coming soon .

Speaker 1 4:05

Interesting . And this data broker stuff right . Well , it looks like it takes about a month to fully remove your data from the data brokers . But if you don't have to do but the reality is is like you tell it to go out and start cleaning and you really don't have to do anything . Typically you have to send manual emails to all these different brokers . First , you have to know who they are .

Pros and Cons of Cloaked

Speaker 1 4:35

There's like hundreds of them so , cloaked , will go out there and start removing your personal data from these data brokers .

Speaker 2 4:44

So the bottom line is you control when you're reachable , and that's a huge shift . That's pretty cool .

Speaker 1 4:50

Yeah , well , let's look at the pros and cons , okay . Okay , let's do it . So let's not sugarcoat it . Okay , let's first start with their strengths and I'll let you handle the downside . Okay , it's one subscription for a lot of tools , which is awesome , and I feel like two very useful ones is definitely the burner information , but the data broker aspect is kind of amazing . Right , it has a very strong privacy stance , which I like . It's not selling your data or reading your messages , they claim , and it's flexible . It works on email , phone payments and data cleaning , and the payment is coming soon , right , yeah , so the cons , because I'm always stuck with the con side of an argument , pros and cons .

Speaker 2 5:45

So the con side is the virtual cards are still in beta , so they haven't released it . Some users report bugs or slow customer service and it's not cheap . It's about $10 to $12 a month . So about $144 a year right 12 times 12 .

Speaker 1 6:02

That's interesting . That's very close to LifeLock's subscription . So now I'm adding Cloaked LifeLock AV . Yeah , that's a lot . My personal identity security is going to cost me as much as it does to watch all my favorite TV shows annually , or my , my , my internet . If not more , it's more , way more .

Speaker 2 6:32

Yeah , because you're doing 144 times three , right .

Speaker 1 6:35

So there's more . Right , vivek

Comparing Alternatives to Cloaked

Speaker 1 6:37

, I mean Cloaked is not the only one in the industry . So , um , tell me a little more about that .

Speaker 2 6:43

So let's compare right . So , in terms of email aliases , firefox Relay or Apple's Hide my Email , it's free and included on your phone . I use that all the time , you know . Hide my Email , it's an Apple feature for Apple users , you know . I think that's really cool . The other , of course , which you've talked about is ProtonMail , and I think that's really cool .

Speaker 2 7:04

The other , of course , which you've talked about is ProtonMail , and ProtonMail has , yeah , protonpass , and ProtonMail itself is the best for privacy In terms of phone numbers . We have Google Voice . People love it . I've had it . It's burner , it's hushed In virtual cards . We have Priv privacycom and IronVest . I've used privacycom before . That's there . Then , from a data broker removal side I haven't tested this . I'd be curious to test it one day . Is DeleteMe or Incogni those ? Are the two big ones .

Speaker 2 7:44

But you know I think I seriously do believe we need to do a deep dive on data brokers and how do we remove our public information from the Internet ? Because if you look at all the billionaires and people who have made a lot of money , you really can't find much information about them . And they have these companies that they work with that completely delete their private information as much as they can because they want to be private , and I've seen that right , like , for example , if you take any billionaire in the US today and try searching like Any famous person ?

Speaker 2 8:16

yeah , Any famous person right Like hey , can you show me a satellite shot of their house ? You don't see it right .

Speaker 1 8:24

It's all blurred out .

Speaker 2 8:26

So you know , people pay a significant amount of money to maintain their privacy and we should do a deep dive on how it could also , how could normal people like us also do that ? You know , Interesting yeah .

Speaker 1 8:42

Well Cloaked , has this all-in-one vibe to it ? Right um , right . And there's others . There's duck , duck go , privacy pro , um . It gives you some of that functionality the broker removal , a vpn and id help uh , for the same price . So it's not your only option . Nice , I personally use my pseudo umudo . You can build just the persona side of it . It has fake emails and phones , so your burner email comes in . I think I pay something ridiculously cheap , like I want to say $5 to $10 annually for it , but it's only mobile-centric .

Speaker 2 9:25

Yeah , and so Cloak tries to do everything . It's like an all-in-one kind of a solution . You have competitors that do fewer things , but they're proven more in the market because they've been longer and sometimes they're often better . So those are the pros and cons .

Speaker 1 9:46

Yeah . So do you want multiple accounts that you manage or you want to do all in one ? That's

Is Cloaked Worth Your Money?

Speaker 1 9:52

interesting , okay . So is Cloak worth it , right ? Cloaked Excuse me , cloaked , yeah , all right . Well , if you're the kind of person who's always signing up for things I think most of us are such as shopping online testing tools , if you're dating all you know and you have signing up for all these dating apps , cloaked is a one-stop convenience and it could be worth it , in my opinion .

Speaker 2 10:24

You know , but if you're privacy-light , you could do a DIY with the same setup with free or cheaper tools . Yeah , but the only thing is now , instead of one tool , you're using multiple tools and then potentially get more reliability . So it's the cost of convenience versus . You know the other side of managing right .

Speaker 1 10:43

It's almost like those . It's like the , the , the privacy version of those meal kits that you order . Right , you know you're paying to save time and not necessarily money .

Speaker 2 10:59

So bottom line is Cloaked . Worth it If you want everything under one roof . Yes . If you're cool juggling multiple apps , you might skip it .

Speaker 1 11:11

There's many alternatives . Okay , firefox Relay , privacycom , duckduckgo , privacy Pro , deleteme . There's Incognito , incogni , and the app I use is MySudo , which , by the way , does not delete , does not have a data broker thing .

Speaker 2 11:35

Yeah , so thanks for listening to Silent Mode Cafe If this episode helped share it with someone still using their real email for sketchy websites . Quote unquote sketchy websites .

Speaker 1 11:48

Yep , yeah , and look , keep in mind , privacy isn't about hiding your identity or just

Final Thoughts on Privacy

Speaker 1 11:58

hiding your identity . It's also choosing what you share and where you share it and who you share it with , and where you share it and who you share it with . Similarly , like recently again I think I've mentioned this before , but I had a again at a medical facility . They were asking me for information I just didn't think was relevant , like who my employer was . I said this has nothing to do with your ability to give me service . I'm not going to share it , right , so you don't have to share your information just because you're being asked for it . Okay , so stay in silent mode . Stay in silent mode , all right , thanks .

Speaker 2 12:40

Vivek . Thanks everyone . Thanks for listening .