| | |  | Spyware | Home » » » » How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace | | | | | | | Description: | | How to Disappear is the authoritative and comprehensive guide for people who seek to protect their privacy as well as for anyone who’s ever entertained the fantasy of disappearing—whether actually dropping out of sight or by eliminating the traceable evidence of their existence.
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Average Customer Review:
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138 of 149 found the following review helpful:
Interesting reading, but don't try this at homeOct 13, 2010
By Ben Rothke
"Author of 'Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know'"
A book such as How to Disappear : Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace, scores very high on the cool factor. Ultimately though, it's one of those books that details things you should not try at home.
Author Frank Ahearn is a professional skip tracer; which is a person who locates other people. The term comes from the word skip being used to describe the person being searched for, and comes from the idiomatic expression to skip town, meaning to depart, perhaps in a rush, and leaving minimal clues behind for someone to trace the skip to a new location. Often these people are wanted by the government, family, spouses, or other authorities.
The book is touted as the "authoritative and comprehensive guide for people who seek to protect their privacy, as well as for anyone who's ever entertained the fantasy of disappearing - whether actually dropping out of sight or by eliminating the traceable evidence of their existence". Those are a number of very different goals.
For those who seek to protect their daily privacy in the physical world, the book provides a lot of good, high-level insights.
Since the author admits he isn't a technology expert, the book doesn't offer significant input on how to ensure online privacy, short of saying that one shouldn't use social media. Readers wanting to protect their online privacy can use effective resources such as CDT's Guide to Online Privacy for such topics.
Most people want to protect their privacy, and while many do entertain a fantasy of simply disappearing, the reality is that true disappearance is extraordinarily difficult and fraught with risk.
At 197 small pages, the book is a quick read and covers all of the key points. The book does have a lot of good details, but isn't the definitive text, as the devil is in the details, and many of those details are missing in the book. The person who truly wants to disappear would need an expert like Ahearn to work with them, rather than simply relying on the book alone.
The danger in a book like this is that it may lead someone to attempt to disappear on a whim. That is a great way to get themselves in a fine mess, often ending up in more trouble than before their aborted disappearance attempt.
The book focuses on 3 key areas: misinformation (destroying all the data known about you), disinformation (creating fake trails) and reformation (act of getting you from origination to destination without leaving any clues).
Some of the books ideas are similar to the federal witness protection program. In the federal program, witnesses are encouraged to keep their first names and choose last names with the same initial in order to make it easier to instinctively use the new identity.
Like the federal witness program, the books notes that in order to prevent the possibility of someone being followed, they should use a convoluted and indirect transportation path before finally reaching the location where they will live under the new identity. This path often involves a long chain of seemingly random routes which are intended to be difficult for a skip tracer to find or anticipate.
The book includes numerous stories of real-world scenarios in which Ahearn was involved with, and shows how to avoid their mistakes.
Many people envision disappearing as being on a beach with endless beers. Ahearn paints a reality involving endless use of disposable cell phones, cash cards, and remote mail boxes. But that is a lonely existence most people don't seem ready for.
Can someone really change themselves? Yes, but it's very expensive and difficult to hide without changing your identity and you certainly cannot hide from the government without changing your identity. The book is ultimately for someone who has a lot of money, as there is no way to create a new life on the cheap.
The book doesn't detail how to create a completely new identity in a new location, something that seemingly only a witness protection program can do, and mainly is about leaving false trails so that those looking for you can't find you.
For the person contemplating disappearing, they must ask themselves if they really want to live a life of endless prepaid phone cards and prepaid credit cards, using only free wireless and disposable USB memory cards as the book suggests. The book is about ensuring that one's old life and new life don't connect. After a few months of that, most people will likely be quite lonely.
The author notes that most people want to disappear for two main reasons: danger or money. Some people deal with stalkers, abusive ex-spouses or someone who came into money and doesn't want friends or family to locate them.
In a recent interview, Ahearn suggested New Zealand is one of the best places to disappear, as it's a long way off and has great beaches, is an English-speaking country and it's easy to acclimate to life there. But for a lifelong Red Sox fan do they really want to root for the New Zealand Warriors rugby team? Does the person understand the cold reality of vegemite?
Ultimately this is an interesting, but impractical book for the vast majority of people. Can one disappear? Perhaps, but it's getting harder, even with an expert like Ahearn. Perhaps the biggest deterrent should be Google StreetView. Even if one moves far away, StreetView is there, ready to announce your location to the world.
For most readers How to Disappear : Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace will be an entertaining book that does have valuable information.
Ultimately, for those considering disappearing, they need to understand the implications of loudly shutting the door on their way out of society. They should contemplate that before they take a course of action they are likely going to regret.
26 of 27 found the following review helpful:
Making it harder and more expensive for someone trying to track you down...Dec 05, 2010
By Thomas Duff
"Duffbert"
While I have my doubts that one can disappear completely without "special assistance" (as in government help or an extreme amount of money), there *are* some ways to make it a lot more difficult to be found by non-government officials. Frank Ahearn and Eileen Horan cover a lot of that information in their book How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace. This is not a large encyclopedic manual on how to eliminate your existence; rather it's more a handbook on how to make it more difficult to be traced (and a lot more expensive for those determined to do so).
Contents:
I'm Frank. Nice To Meet You; Meet Your Enemy - The Skip Tracer; A Skip Tracer's Best Friends; Time To Disappear; Misinformation; Tracks And Clues In The Home; Disinformation; Your Reformation Arsenal; Reformation; How Not To Disappear; Disappear From Identity Thieves; Disappear In Social Media; Disappear From A Frog; Disappear From A Stalker; Disappear From The Country; Pseudocide 101; Final Thoughts; Acknowledgments; Index
Ahearn was a professional skip tracer, a person paid to track people down. Using both legal and illegal methods, he was usually able to find whoever he was going after as they nearly always left a trail of some sort. In Disappear, he takes the other side of the equation and talks about what someone would need to do to make it more difficult and expensive to find them. While some of them are obvious (stop using social media, don't use your credit cards), others are more tricky and require some time and effort (and money) to put into place. For instance, in one case he had a person open a small checking account and the ATM card was given to a friend who traveled extensively. The friend made small charges in various cities, making it look like the person was moving around a great deal. He coupled that with a visit to a different city to look at apartments and have a credit check run. Any skip trace looking to find the person would have to pursue those leads, all of which would lead to dead ends. Yes, the skip trace may eventually pull the right thread at some point, but the costs to the person looking for you go up significantly.
If you take the information in this book for what it's worth, it's a good reference tool and a fun read. Thinking this is the equivalent of the Witness Protection Program "how-to" manual is a mistake, as it's not. And if the federal authorities are after you, there's little in here that will keep them at bay for very long. But if you're trying to disappear from the annoying ex or a crazy who has a beef with you, How To Disappear might be the key for keeping a step or two ahead of them.
Disclosure:
Obtained From: Library
Payment: Borrowed
46 of 52 found the following review helpful:
 A Fantastic Read!Sep 11, 2010
By K. Dowling
Like many people, I have no desire to disappear. Yet I am immensely curious of two things: 1 - what information the Internet and the world has on me and 2 - If one wanted to, how can they properly get up and go without being traced? How To Disappear provides both answers. The book has an amazingly in-depth outline of erasing your digital footprint. Something that adds to it's charm is the author's method of delivering this fascinating information in a way that is easily understood and at many times truthfully humorous. It is not just a "how to" guide. It is much, much more. I recommend this book to anyone who is curious about disappearing (even if you do not want to), determined to disappear, and someone looking for a great read!
17 of 19 found the following review helpful:
AWESOME BOOK! BEWARE- YOU'LL DISAPPEAR INTO ITS PAGES WITH FASCINATION!!Oct 30, 2010
By Cleo
This book is wonderful-- even for people like me who have no intention of disappearing (except into its pages)! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it no matter what kind of mood I was in because it's like two books in one. It offers serious invaluable advice on the tools one can use to attain/retain as much privacy as possible in this increasingly digitized and invasive un-private world, as well as to stay safe from those seeking us to cause us harm, but it also contains descriptions of cases the author worked on that are fascinating and fun to read! And it's very entertaining to read about some of the crazy people Mr. Ahearn encountered as well as some of the stupid things people do. There are also amusing (often hilarious) asides with words of wisdom and advice from the author, for example:
"Just remember: if two men in trench coats are at your door, it's the FBI. If it's just one man in a trench coat, it's the IRS. Either way, you probably shouldn't open the door."
The book is written in a breezy informal manner that makes it seem as though you're having a conversation with the author at the kitchen table. So to Mr. Ahearn-- much applause and encore please!! And, as for the cases described in the book, they'd sure make a great TV series!!
51 of 66 found the following review helpful:
 It has some helpful hints and is worth reading.Sep 05, 2010
By D. C. Wornock
If you wish to disappear and not be quickly and easily found it has many helpful suggestions on how to avoid the many common mistakes making people easy to find and how to leave false trails. For that it is worth buying. However, the authors deliberately avoid any discussion about changing your identity.
As the authors point out, whether intentionally or unintentionally, it is very expensive and difficult to hide without changing your identity and you certainly cannot hide from the government without changing your identity.
The authors have no experience or expertise about changing your identity so they avoid the issue by claiming it is a bad idea. They do offer one suggestion. That is, to pay someone in an impoverished country $2,000 per year to borrow their identity. However, the authors offer no suggestions as to how to do that. Nevertheless, that one suggestion and examples of how to leave false trails and to avoid common mistakes, makes the book worth buying.
Otherwise, the book is a disappointment because, without changing your identity, as the authors point out, it will cost many thousands of dollars and an extreme amount of time and effort to hide from anyone willing to spend a few thousand dollars to find you.
Therefore, since the book offers no help in hiding from the government, is of little value to most people. The book is of primary value to wealthy individuals that want privacy from individuals (not government) wanting to find them and willing to spend $10,000 or more to do so.
If you are not hiding from the government, most people can just move and not be found since it is unlikely that anyone they know would spend several thousand dollars to find them.
The vast majority of people that need to disappear, need to disappear from the government due to some minor youthful indiscretions such as having sex at age 17 with their 16 year old girlfriend and being placed on the list of sex offenders until age 40 or having a criminal record for smoking a joint. For such individuals, other than the short hint about borrowing someone's identity by paying them $2,000 per year, the book is of no value. The government does not spend money looking for and tracking these individuals. However, their youthful indiscretions prevent them from getting a good job and having a normal life.
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