Why You Need To Learn How To Vanish!

in #life8 years ago

Without the ability to keep secrets, individuals lose the capacity to distinguish themselves from others, to maintain independent lives, to be complete and autonomous persons. This does not mean that a person actually has to keep secrets to be autonomous, just that she must possess the ability to do so. The ability to keep secrets implies the ability to disclose secrets selectively, and so the capacity for selective disclosure at one’s own discretion is important to individual autonomy as well.

Secrecy is a form of power. The ability to protect a secret, to preserve one’s privacy, is a form of power. The ability to penetrate secrets, to learn them, to use them, is also a form of power. Secrecy empowers, secrecy protects, secrecy hurts. The ability to learn a person’s secrets without his or her knowledge — to pierce a person’s privacy in secret — is a greater power still.

We want to help you exercise your unalienable right to secrecy, or in other words, to have you and your property left alone.

Starting to vanish can seem like a massively complicated project. Please do not be intimidated but just take it one step at a time. Sure, you may feel overwhelmed and be wondering, “Where in the world do I start?”

This article will give you practical and actionable tips with as much value as possible to solve the particular issue or circumstance. Sometimes the tips are basic. Sometimes the tips are complex. But never will your time or attention be taken for granted with fluffy time wasting suggestions.

Sometimes this includes analysis of a law or court case, actual or potential uses of some technology or just current trends or events.

But at the end of the day we want to help you protect your privacy, decrease your risk of being an identity theft victim and doing so completely legally so you do not break any laws.

Five Things You Can Do

1. Here is a Free Privacy Guide that contains five easy ways to increase your privacy and is a quick introduction to actionable items you can do for free right now.

2. Get acquainted with Bitcoin. I have loved, written about and recommended Bitcoin for a long time and see it as a powerful tool when applying it to controlling privacy ever since. Bitcoin will become one of your most powerful tools because it makes so much possible. And protecting your Bitcoin, or Steem for that matter!, involves understanding how to use asymmetric cryptography to secure and protect private keys.

3. Read a few of these popular posts. If a lot of other people have found them useful then maybe you will too.

4. Consider watching some videos at How To Vanish TV. These are often included in articles we write as examples or solutions but you may feel like going through the playlist anyway.

5. The more people who apply privacy hygiene the safer and more private we all are because you could protect your privacy only to have one of your friends inadvertently breach it. Even Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg, complained about a family photo being posted to Facebook and the shared with the public.

Conclusion

So please consider sharing our content with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter. This should stir some interesting discussions and help all of us be safer by employing privacy hygiene practices.

And we would love to hear from fellow Steemers on why privacy is so important. Please share your stories, strategies, tips and tricks in the comments so help us all out. Thanks!

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Excellent tips.

Here are some resources for people who are new to this stuff:

Use this chart to choose the best VPN for your needs. It is very detailed. Basically you want one located outside of the "5 Eyes" countries and that does not keep logs. Chart here: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/

Use these sites to switch out your commonly used software for ones which respect your privacy:
https://prism-break.org/en/
https://www.privacytools.io/

Use ConfigFox to lock down your Firefox browser: http://configfox.sourceforge.net/

If you're using Chrome make sure you have addons like Adblock, Ghostery, and Https Everywhere. And if you're using a VPN make sure to have WebRTC Leak Prevent.

Use https://whoer.net/ to check your public IP and the information your browser makes available to the sites you visit.

A few small changes to your usage habits can make a huge difference to your online safety. Good luck!

The most money I have is the amount I keep a secret

+1 thank you for links !

this is pretty bad. whats next, the "paperchase" method for creating a new identity?

IDK if that howtovanish site is yours, but all the info on it seems extremely dated and most of it is effectively useless now.

Wow, great article and tips in here! Thank you very very much. You sure get my upvote. Namaste :)

One thing I don't keep private is how much I value my privacy. If the contradiction in that sentence strikes you as an oxymoron, good, it shows you're thinking.

And this is but one minor example of the tension between the public nature of a blockchain and the pseudo anonymity that disconnects the immutable public ledger from real world identity.

As a public ledger, blockchain technology is a powerful publishing tool for anything, including steemit posts, votes of an election, court decisions, deeds to land and payment history, all of which provide accountability and a highly secure WORM (Write Once, Read Many) database.

Being involved with BitShares for several years I have often commented on the juxtaposition and dichotomy between public blockchain information and the need for privacy. When John Underwood's Identabit was first introduced I raised concerns of how it might affect BitShares. I was involved with Onceuponatime and the early formation of the BitShares stealth feature (now being spearheaded by kencode ofBitShares Munich) because I saw the need to protect what assets are owned from just anybody.

So for me personally the concept of a public blockchain ledger and privacy/ personal control are quite contradictory. It is the application of the tool that determines whether it will be used for good or evil, not the tool itself.

Anyone that claims they are not concerned about privacy today have not learned the valuable lessons history has to teach us. Who would want their monthly bank statements published in the local newspaper? The greater the balance in your account the more you'll probably want to hide it from the public.

Interesting, I have a VPN for my iPhone and iPad, using a "RED" Tor browser also; agreed, you can never be too careful!!

How do you use a VPN for your IPhone and IPad. Sorry all new to this stuff also can you use a VPN for streaming devices. In the article he said avoid video surveillance cameras that's like avoiding air nowadays.

I remember an anonymous video a couple of years ago that gave instructions on how to install infrared led lights underneath the brim of a ball cap. Even though no one can see the light the cameras pick it up and makes your face look like a glowing orb so you are unrecognizable

VPNs are a great privacy tool! I like Private Internet Access because they accept bitcoins and work with devices like iPhones, iPads and Android; kind of defeats the purpose to pay with a credit card linked to your name!

I use a free VPN, it's an app that's freely available.

I use https://www.startpage.com/ for private browsing.

Other good options are:

https://search.disconnect.me/
https://www.unbubble.eu/
and of course https://duckduckgo.com/ !

I recommend making duckduckgo your default search engine in your browser. Get away from Google. :)

Great suggestion and that is what I use primarily for search.

Ditto, for some years now ! +1 for you !

Your term "privacy hygiene" really grabbed my attention, Thanks!

Yep! You don't want to have a communicable privacy disease where you are leaking goop all over the place and getting it all over everyone. That is just nasty! Yuck!!
Head Lesion

Great post and links Trace. Keep up the great work. Cheers

Good info Trace.

Now I am going to pull off a vanishing act!

LOL, I love it! I actually held a sloth last week; how seredipidious!

You know I have been in Panama for 5 years and have never held one.

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