By
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A reader of my new book, The Art of Fact Investigation, suggested that for the next edition there should
be a chapter about legal ways to “hide from snoopers, private and public
sector. I am probably not the only one who was thinking as I read the book on
what I could do to keep my life more private in general in this day and age,
other than staying off Facebook and Twitter.”
Our firm believes in showing
exactly how we get the information we get (plenty of examples in the book as
well as on our two blogs). Therefore, we offer here free of charge a few
pointers on how databases collect information about you and what kinds of
things you can do to stay off them.
1.
Buy a house
through a limited liability company that is not named in connection with you or
anyone in your family. Base it not at your house or office but at the office of
a trusted lawyer. Deeds and mortgages in the U.S. are public, so any home
bought in your name will pop up, often on the internet free of charge if you
live in a county that puts all such information on line. Some counties do, some
don’t.
2. When you move into the house and you want to register for discount cards at
your local drugstore or grocery store, don’t. If you don’t mind lying, give
them a different name and a made-up phone number. Those stores sell the
information people submit to the databases. If you put your real name and
number down, you will get calls the same day asking if you need contracting or
other help with your new home. As long as you have the card with you or
remember the phone number you used, you will still get your discounts.
3. If possible, put utilities in a name different from yours. Gas and electric
company information gets into databases.
4. Buy a cell phone with cash and replenish it as you go.
5. Be very careful about who gets your cell number. As in #2 above, if you
order a pizza while visiting someone else’s house and provide your cell phone
number to the pizzeria, the databases may associate your number and that
address.
6. Avoid borrowing money. This is a big one, but credit reporting agencies are
allowed to sell some information to databases that relates to where you live.
The databases won’t disclose how much you’ve borrowed and from whom without
your approval, but will make use of “header” information that can reveal home
addresses, numbers and associated businesses.
7. Try not to sue people. We had a case in which someone hiding assets and
claiming to be broke sued a neighbor. We were able to trace his car that had
allegedly been damaged by the neighbor, and found that the car’s owner was a
relative who jumped to the top of our list of people who could have been
holding our man’s money for him.
In summary, unless you use
cash and live an extremely quiet life as a renter, it is difficult to hide
completely from the electronic information gathering available today. On the other
hand, we report to clients on a regular basis that a particular person owns a
home, has never been to court and has nothing of note about him in any database
or newspaper.
We then recommend interviewing
former colleagues and others who would know more about him.
Once you get to this stage, our advice is: be nice to others and they will
probably say nice things about you too.
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