Invisible Privacy | Online Privacy

The following quote is from Duncan Long’s book Protect Your Privacy:

“According to the FBI, a Washington, D.C police officer was attempting to extort $10,000 from a married man who had visited a gay bar. The officer had apparently employed a law-enforcement computer system to identify automobile license plates of cars that had been recorded as being outside the bar, and then linked the plates to the names and addresses of the vehicles. He then cross-referenced to see if the men were married, and if they were, he attempted to extort money from them. According to the FBI, the officer threatened to send photos showing the men at the bar to wives and employers if the victims didn’t cough up silence money.”

You may never visit a gay bar but think of the many other dangers of allowing your name (and sometimes even your home address!) to appear on your vehicle’s registration. Just one example: You innocently park in front of a home known to harbor a meth lab. You may get a visit from the police. Or perhaps the home is a so-called safe house for a Muslim terrorist cell. You may get a visit from the FBI. Or suppose the home is that of women who’s being stalked by her insanely jealous ex-husband—you might even get beaten up!

Each of our five vehicles is titled in a separate New Mexico LLC. The address for each New Mexico LLC is in Spain’s Canary Islands. We often lend our vehicles to friends. What if one of these friends would happen to park in front of the wrong home or the wrong bar? As Alfred E. Neuman would say, “What? Me worry?”

Labels: ghost address, license plate, New Mexico LLC, NM LLC, tracing a license plate

There has been a lot of confusion about this. Perhaps I can clear it up.

1. If you order a custom New Mexico LLC, you can ask to have no address listed at all. This is not a good idea because New Mexico will assume you are starting a business in that state. You will therefore get letters and more letters requiring you to fill out state forms for employees, etc.

2. You may also order a custom New Mexico LLC and list your own street address or another street address you use as a ghost address. If you use your own address, there goes your privacy! And even if you use a nearby ghost address, you will start getting junk mail because that address will be picked up from the NM public Web site.

3. If you order a pre-formed (shelf) New Mexico LLC, it will of course have the address of a “principal place of business” on it already. If you order from Rosie, for example, the Articles will show an address in Spain’s Canary Islands. Is that a good idea? Yes, for two reasons:

(a) Junk mail will go to the Canary Islands and be destroyed there.
(b) No one will have a clue as to your true address.

4. If the Articles on your NM LLC show Rosie’s Canary Islands address, can you then use that address for your own purposes? Absolutely not. Once Rosie sells the NM LLC to you, you must then use whatever your own address is for receiving mail.

Consider this example: You sell your car to Joe Jones. Your own address is on the title. When Joe fills out the section for “Buyer,” can he list YOUR address? Of course not. He must list an address that belongs to him. That is where the title will be sent.

5. What about the Santa Fe address of the resident agent—can you use that address for anything? Answer: NEVER! Any unofficial mail sent to the agent’s address will be returned to sender, and he may then choose to resign as your resident agent.


CONCLUSION: When you use your NM LLC to purchase a vehicle, buy real estate, or for any other purpose, you are not authorized to use either of the two addresses listed in the Articles. Instead, you should use an alternate address of your own. If you do not have a good alternative address, consider obtaining a ghost address from Rosie Enriquez. She offers addresses in Canada, Alaska, or Spain’s Canary Islands.

Labels: ghost address, New Mexico, New Mexico limited liability company, New Mexico LLC, New Mexico registered agent, principal place of business

If you plan to order a limited liability company and you even remotely suspect that someday an enemy might try to track your company down, here's what to do:

1. Choose a state other than your own in which to form the company. New Mexico (unless you live there) is the absolute best because no annual information returns are required. Remember, a private investigator (PI) will first check the records in the state where you live. If your LLC does not show up there, he is then forced to search among the other 49 states. (His first three choices will probably be Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming, so it's better not to form a limited liability company in any of those states.)

2. When you title your home, car, truck, trailer, camper, motorcycle or snowmobile with an LLC, use a faraway ghost address. In fact, many states allow you to list an address in another country, which is why an address in Spain is offered on my website.

3. Use a generic name, i.e., a name so common that it is used in dozens of states. If you are looking at a list of shelf LLCs, for example, watch for names like NORTH STAR, BLUE MOON, or RED RIVER. Just imagine the problem a PI will have with a common name. There will be identically-named LLCs in dozens of states! Which one is yours? The PI will not have a clue, especially if you are using a faraway ghost address!

4. Last but far from least, use a separate LLC for each purchase. That way, if one of the bad guys discovers that your old Camry is listed in XYZ LLC, at least his subsequent search for that name will not bring up the LLCs that own your home, your boat, and your aircraft. (Shameful commercial pitch--contact me before the end of this month for the lowest-ever prices on New Mexico limited liability companies!)

Labels: best state for an LLC, foreign address, ghost address, hide your assets, how to hide your name, LLC cost, LLC discount, LLC names, New Mexico, New Mexico LLC, NM LLC, pre-formed LLCs, shelf LLCs

As many of us suspect, incoming mail from tax havens or certain Arab countries may raise red flags. Or perhaps you have a romantic interest in someone from another country and you prefer to keep that information to yourself. Whatever the case, there is a simple solution.

1. Sign up with a mail-receiving facility in Europe, where mail service is excellent.

2. Instruct your bank, lover, or business friend to send all letters to your new European address.

3. Have your re-mailer open the letters, scan them, e-mail them to you, and then shred the letters.

4. When you receive the scanned letters, print them out (if necessary) and then delete them.

The above may not be a perfect solution but it’s a lot better than having certain letters coming into this country with your name on it, even if you are using a PO Box or a commercial mail receiving agency (CMRA). One such service is offered on my website—an address in Spain’s Canary Islands. You may direct any questions about this to Rosie Enriquez, senorita [at] canaryislandspress [dot] com.

Labels: ghost address, mailing address, scanned mail, secret mail

My local postmaster once warned me that I will have more trouble sending things to Canada than to any other country in the western world but I paid little attention. However, that changed when Mark Nestmann, author of The Lifeboat Strategy, e-mailed this reference to me: http://admin.siue.edu/postal/postal_regs.htm. In the quotation below, I underline the scariest part:

MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS: Addressee and Sender's MUST be spelled out with full first and last names. Using "Grandma" or "Uncle" is not acceptable. The complete address of the sender, including ZIP code and country of origin, must be shown in the upper left hand corner of the address side of the package, envelope or card. Addressee to recipients in Canada MUST be printed - preferably in ink or typewritten -- using capital letters.

Could this be true? I immediately sent letters to Canadian friends from Ontario to the Yukon with no return address. All were received, but how long will this last?

Suggestion: When mailing a letter to Canada, use a return address other than your own. Some may choose to use a fake address but I do not recommend it. If a letter is not going to be delivered, I wish to know that, and the only way to know it is to have the letter returned. For sensitive mail, therefore, I use one of the ghost addresses listed on my website. My favorite is the one in the Canary Islands.

Labels: anonymous mail, Canada post, foreign mail drop, ghost address, return address

As readers of How to Be Invisible already know, you should never accept mail at your true home address. Routine mail can be received in a post office box and sensitive mail can arrive at a faraway ghost address.

However, some companies irritatingly refuse to ship to a PO Box. (I just did battle with Goes Litho from Chicago about this. They finally relented when I offered to pay extra to have bordered bond paper sent to my PO Box.) But what if the company refuses to budge and yet you are determined to keep your home address a secret?

You can try another supplier. If that does not work, you may think about using the address of a relative or friend. However, that may present a serious loss of privacy. Here is a recent example (names have been disguised):

Burnett Williams, recently retired, sold his home where he had lived for 30 years and moved from Montana to a secret address in Arizona. Given the way the Federal Reserve is currently printing money by the trainload, he feared that a serious devaluation was coming within two years, so what to do with all the cash?

After checking with some knowledgeable friends, he decided to put 20 percent of it into silver bullion. The immediate problem he faced was that silver bullion is heavy and is usually shipped only by UPS. UPS keeps an international database with the address of every shipper and every receiver. Once your address gets into their system, it never gets out.

Williams was not about to let any neighbor or friend accept this shipment on his behalf because the contents (given the shipper’s business name and the weight) would be obvious. End of privacy! He therefore gave the following name and address to the supplier. (This is the address of a UPS Customer Center. Note that he did not give them his distinctive first name.)

B. Williams
ATTENTION — HOLD
1975 E. Wildermuth
Tempe, AZ 85281

When he picked up the shipment he used his passport for ID, since passports never include an address. And if anyone googles “B. Williams,” some 641,000 results will show up!

That is how you too can protect your secret home address when a supplier insists on shipping via UPS.

Labels: ghost address, hide your home address, precious medals, secret home address, secret parcel deliveries, secret shipments, silver bullion, silver rounds, UPS

I will not list the variety of legal reasons for which you may suddenly wish to change your license plate number. I will, however, list a recent example that involved one of my consulting clients. (Names have been changed.)

David White spent a long evening at the home of Maria Flores, an attractive young Mexican widow who lives in a village nearby. His beige Camry was parked in her driveway.

When the time came to leave, David opened Maria’s front door, snapped on the outside light, and spotted two men at the back of his car. One was holding a flashlight and the other had a pad and pencil in his hand. David yelled and reached into his jacket as if to withdraw a handgun. Both men fled. He called me at sunrise the next morning and asked me what to do.

“I need to use my car today but these guys have got my license plate number!”

"It can't be traced, David." (Following my instructions, it was titled in the name of a New Mexico LLC with a ghost address.)

"But these guys and their pals will be watching for it!"

“I'll meet you down at the licensing bureau when they open,” I said. "You'll get a new plate that shows you contribute to a law enforcement memorial. You’ll pay an extra $40 a year, but you get the plate right away.”

I keep a drawer full of decals and bumper stickers for every occasion, and I selected one before heading out to meet David. His car now has a new license plate with a silhouette of some law enforcement officers on the left side, and also a prominent decal in one corner of the rear window:

FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE
2009
ACTIVE SUPPORTER

(How David arranges to meet with Maria in the future will be up to him. My duties ended with the decal and the plate change.)

Labels: consulting, ghost address, license plate, license plate privacy, NM LLC, tracing a license plate, vanity plate

It scared me, when I first discovered this information some five years ago. I wondered what the purpose of this was, how long the pictures were kept on file, and whether or not the back of the envelope was also being photographed.

Thanks to a new friend inside the USPS, I now have the facts. Here is what happens when you mail a letter:

1. The front side of your envelope is photographed. At the same time, a fine color bar code is sprayed on the backside of your letter.

2. The image is then sent to a remote site, usually in another state where non-postal workers work at terminals and key in the bar code for that specific letter.

3. Your letter is then is processed through a machine that reads the light colored bar code on the backside and instantly sprays a regular bar code on the lower front side of the envelope. (However, if a letter already has a bar code on it, it will usually not have its picture taken. For example, mail from utility companies gets bypassed from this process.)

"I don't know how long those images are stored for," says my informant. "However, my guess is that it no longer than a few days."

CONCLUSION:

Normally, it makes no difference whether you put a return address on the front or the back of the envelope. However, mail handlers can make a note of the return addresses you are using, if they have a legitimate reason for doing so. If, therefore, you are concerned about certain sensitive mail, one suggestion would be to not include a return address on your outgoing mail.

A better solution, however, would be to use a ghost address for the return. That way, you will know if your letter failed to arrive. (It may be returned for insufficient postage or for an error in the address. These things happen to the best of us.) It will also prevent your letter from ending up in Atlanta, Saint Paul, or San Francisco, the USPS's three major mail recovery centers. Once there, your letter will be opened and examined.

Labels: ghost address, mail recovery center, mail security, MRC, return address, secret letters, secret mail

If you’ve not yet heard about this case, here are the facts:

Nazita and her husband David have a joint account at a Chase branch in Kew Gardens, Queens, along with a custodial one for their three children. But Nazita also had a bank account of $800,000—money that was apparently hers alone. Unbelievable though it seems, the suit alleges that a bank employee at Chase called her husband David to encourage him to move some of that $800,000 in his wife’s secret bank account into other investments with Chase. David, it seems, knew nothing about that account until the phone call came in.

Had Nazita read either my book How to Be Invisible, or my e-book Invisible Money, this sad affair could have been avoided. Here is what she should have done:

1. Given a ghost address when she opened the account, along with:

2. A secret voice mail number that only she could access.

Do you have a secret bank account? If so, does the banker have your true address and telephone number? If so, move that account to another bank!

Labels: Chase bank, ghost address, nazita, secret phone number, secret bank account

Personally, I use a ghost address in Spain’s Canary Islands, as do many of my friends. However, any foreign address will do as long as it is a legitimate address where incoming letters can either be sent on to you or scanned and transmitted via e-mail.

1. HOME PRIVACY

To keep your home address private, never include it on your letterheads or business cards. However, you may need to include a mailing address in case someone decides to send you a letter (or a check!). Therefore, list your foreign ghost address.

2. VEHICLE PRIVACY

Title your car in the name of a limited liability company and give the LLC a “principal place of business” in a foreign land. If you later lend your car to someone who gets a serious citation (such as for outrunning the police!) and doesn’t tell you, at least it will not be traced back to you.

3. MAIL PRIVACY

Foreign mail (such as from a Muslim country or from a bank in Liechtenstein) may draw undesired attention to you. Therefore, have all such mail sent to your foreign address. It can then be scanned and e-mailed to you.

PRIVACY BONUS

If you list a principal place of business overseas, a U.S. subpoena demanding all records cannot be served at that address.

Labels: canary islands, foreign address, foreign mail drop, ghost address, overseas mail, secret mail

1. Never, as long as you live, ever have mail delivered to your door again. Use a PO Box for personal letters and bills and a secret “ghost” address for sensitive mail such as passport delivery, real estate tax notices, and statements from faraway banks.

2. Despite the inconvenience, do not have pizza delivered to your door. If you allow that to happen even one time, any PI can get the address by calling the pizza company, pretending to be you, and asking what address is on file for your telephone number.

3. This one is difficult, but never allow an envelope or a package to be delivered to your home address. FedEx is said to share its files with the U.S. government and both FedEx and UPS tie your name to your home address in their databases.

4. Do not give your home address to a dentist, a doctor, a hospital, a car dealer, an optometrist, a supermarket (for the card), or to anyone else.

5. Do not allow your home address to be included on your driver’s license. Many if not all DMVs sell their lists to third parties. (In some states, they may require your home address for their records but will allow you to have a PO Box address printed on your license.)

BENEFIT: If someone knocks when you are not expecting a friend, why worry? It can’t be the mail carrier, the FedEx or UPS person, the pizza guy, or anyone else you need to talk to, right? You might even wish to put this sign on your front door:

KNOCK ALL YOU
WANT. WE DO NOT
ANSWER THE DOOR

The above information is taken from How to Be Invisible (Saint Martins Press).

Labels: FedEx, ghost address, mail privacy, pizza delivery, PO Box, privacy tips, secret delivery, secret home address, secret mail, UPS

The problem with prescriptions is that you lose your privacy when the pharmacist enters your name, address and telephone number into a database.

Step one. Tell the doctor to make your prescription out in your first initial and last name. Only once have I had a problem with this. When I got out to my car, I noticed that—despite my instructions—the doctor had nevertheless included my first name. I returned to the office, showed the prescription to the nurse at the counter, and said, “Doctor Jones told me he would make this to J. Luna but I see he forgot, and put in my first name. Please have him write it again to just J. Luna.” She disappeared into the back, and returned within minutes with the new prescription.

Step two: Select a new first name, one that begins with the same initial. For example, if your name is Dale Martin and your prescription reads D. Martin, you can use another name such as Dalton, Davis, Dean, Denton, Dick, Drake, or Dudley.

Step three: Choose a new address, phone number, and a new date of birth to go along with the new name.

Step four: Order your prescription at a pharmacy where you have never been before. For maximum security, prepare a business card on your computer with a foreign address and phone number. One of my consulting clients has business cards made up in a variation of his name, with an address in Spain’s Canary Islands. (The address is legitimate because he has a ghost address that is available on my website.) When a pharmacist sees the address, he or she usually just enters “Spain” and skips the telephone number.

Once you’ve gotten a prescription this way, you have two choices for the next time you need one filled. You can go back to the same place, use the same data (show the label on your previous bottle), and be prepared with an answer to a question such as “Oh, I see you are visiting again from …” Or, you can choose another first name, another date of birth, another address and phone number, and go to a different pharmacy.

Labels: alternate name, foreign address, ghost address, pen name, pharmacy, prescription

In the small village of Sequim, Washington, 237 homes were for sale in the month of August, 1997. And how many sales were made that month? Just one. The real estate agents were no longer looking for listings. The only solution was to sell the home myself.

First, I decided to make the sale of this home my full time job. The locals were not buying so I had to snare someone from out of the area, perhaps even out of the state. The challenge was to pull travelers off Highway 101 (at that time, Sequim’s main street) and bring them six blocks north, one block west, another three blocks north, and then west on Williamson Lane. I stocked up on real estate signs and frames, poster board, arrows, stick-on letters, and bought two dozen helium-filled balloons every day.

We parked our Lexus on 101, facing west, and the Buick on the far side of the main stop light, facing west. Both cards had signs and balloons and messages that were changed daily. One day they would say “Cozy home priced below the market.” Another day “Owner will finance” and the day after that, “Custom Home with Shop!” When the traveler turned north, he could see our Mazda up ahead, with more balloons and a sign that said “Left at the next corner for the biggest little home in Sequim!” More signs, more balloons, more arrows, until the traveler rolled up to the pickup parked out in front.

Twenty-seven days later we sold our home to a couple from Wisconsin who had just been passing through. They had not planned to buy a home in this area until the following year but—mesmerized by the signs and balloons—they followed the arrows. After payment details were discussed, they purchased our home on Williamson Lane for list price.

Labels: advertising, balloons, ghost address, hidden ownership, internet privacy, LLCs, real estate, signs