Social Media Can Help You Fake Your Own Death
Julie188 writes "We are inundated with warnings that social media is systematically stripping away our privacy. But Frank Ahearn, the so-called 'Dear Abby' of disappearing, is attempting to show folks how to use those same technologies to regain your privacy, even helping you go as far as faking your own death. Ahearn is a professional skip-tracer who has hunted down people like Monica Lewinsky. In an interview with Ahearn on Network World, he says, 'One can legally disappear through the use of corporations and offshore corporations. The idea is to embrace technology and to become a virtual entity.' My favorite tip is that New Zealand is the place to land once you leap off the grid. Not only is it far from most of the rest of the English speaking world, he says, but it also has great beaches."
Marge:"When I asked you if that Twitter account was to fake your own death you told me no."
Monstar L
Where am I supposed to skip to if I'm starting in .nz?
I am a lawyer and this constitutes legal advice and I shall indemnify you against any losses arising from taking it.
"My favorite tip is that New Zealand is the place to land once you leap off the grid. Not only is it far from most of the rest of the English speaking world, he says, but it also has great beaches."
Meeheheheeehhh, that's a shaky plan.
Even if you go off the grid the terminators will still track you down.. SkyNet will triumph. Neither Arnold nor Summer Glau can save you.
It was revealed today that a member of parliament had been arrested for stealing the identity of a dead baby and thereby falsely obtaining a passport.
:D
The Government here has a few thousand monkeys that spend all their time browsing through the various redundant overlapping government agency databases to catch you out for identity fraud, benefit fraud, unlawfully riding a train without a ticket or forgetting to tie your shoelaces in the morning. But yeah, we have some nice beaches, so it's worth the risk
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
So, can I hang with Elvis and Michael Jackson? Or better, just Elvis?
Don't buy this book on Amazon using your credit card if you do intend on disappearing. It might tip off anyone who does come looking for you.
If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot immediately.
Then NZ has great natural disasters.
As well as great beaches.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The average person does not have the time to create disinformation or the resources to move to New Zealand. On the other hand governments and large organizations will find disinformation strategies very useful. It is only a matter of time before sites like wikileaks are inverted.
iendedi. s/istartedi/iendedi/g. Whoah!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This whole 'interview' seemed very shallow with no detail. The interviewer kept pestering about illegal things which he kept saying "No, don't do that." and I kept saying "Well what would one do then?" Finally at the end he mentions his book with a link to where you can buy it.
So, what is the point of this article then?
No sig for you!!
He tells you to print out something and mail it to him. Everybody knows that printers can put microdots in text to identify the printer. This was done to foil counterfeiters. He should have told you to cut text out of magazines ransom-note style and mail it that way. Even then, they could be tracking the serial numbers on your bills. Better to mine gold yourself, carefully weigh it, beat it flat, and send that to him. Oh no! The stamps... not sure how to fix that one...
NZ may be a great place to end up but it has a first-world intelligence and police service with very good databases. The French military naively thought they could wander round NZ in the '80s with no one noticing but just about every step these secret agents took was remembered, videotaped and documented by sticky-nosed busy-bodies. The best place to hide is in a crowd and with NZ being so underpopulated, strangers stick out.
NZ may be a great place to end up but it has a first-world intelligence and police service with very good databases.
Oblig. Tui ad "Yeah, right!"
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/politics/4124806/Inquiry-into-SIS-role
... a bunch of phoney identities under which to wreak havoc. Meanwhile, keep your real name and reputation clean. When one of the 'evil' identities gets into trouble, kill it off.
Set these up early in life and keep them going with minor activity. Loan a fake SSN out to an illegal laborer to stay on the books. Then, when you hit it big in Vegas, you record the income under the false ID. That person 'dies' (Hey, it was a Mexican gardener anyway), leaving no trace of the cash. Party with it using the next ID, etc.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why not fake a birth and give this person a unique identity online? Complete with pictures, tweets, Amazon account, everything.
CrisR
New Zealand has a population of 4 million.
73% of unmixed European descent. Demographics of New Zealand
Metro New York City has a population of 19 million, and is ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse.
Approximately 36% of the city's population is foreign-born. In New York no single country or region of origin dominates. The ten largest countries of origin for modern day immigration are the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Guyana, Mexico, Ecuador, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia and Russia. The largest ethnic groups in New York City are African American, Italian, Jewish, and Irish.
The New York City metropolitan area is home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel, and the city proper contains the largest Jewish community in the world. It is also home to nearly a quarter of the nation's South Asians, the largest African American community of any city in the country, and comprised as of 2008 a population of 659,596 ethnic Chinese. the largest outside of Asia. New York City
The Islamic population in 2004-2005 was around 600,000. Columbia Presents First-Ever Study on Muslim Political, Social, Religious Identity in NYC
Manhattan has 354 million square feet of office space.
But New York remains importantly, if less visibly, a manufacturing center. There are no unmarketable skills, however obscure.
The fool on the run takes to the back roads, the Pacific, the Klondike - where the youngest child will point him out as the stranger. The one who doesn't belong. Doesn't dress the part. Doesn't act the part.
The problem with Australia, if you can get here (kiwis let every one in) is we have so many more asshole cops that want to check your licence at every set of traffic lights. Not to mention the obscene terror laws (that they use on anyone they want, no need for a search warrant in Australia), or the random pedestrian frisking and pockets searches.
Rocket Surgeon.
It's easy.
Lord_of_the_nerf has changed his relationship status to Single
Lord_of_the_nerf likes The Cure and Why Does Everyone Who Loves Me Leave???
Lord_of_the_nerf's current status: *sigh* WHEN DOES THE HURTING STOP???
Lord_of_the_nerf likes Schick Razors and Warm Baths
Or you can not be a dumbass and just sign up for Facebook as "Rusty Shackleford" or "John J Johnson" instead of handing over your real, actual info to that giant pile of crap in the first place. That seems to be working great for me.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
And here I thought social media was used to fake a life...
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
NZ does have one of the 7 bases of Echelon, but apart from that, their intelligence agencies suck.
it mainly helps you fake your own life.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
"We are inundated with warnings that social media is systematically stripping away our privacy."
We are inundated with hair-on-fire cliches being used to preface a forced association between someone's inconsequential issue and some hot button topics and trigger words, in order to convince us that the association is valid and the issue is significant. Needing to use these is a good sign that the ensuing issue is too insubstantial to stand on its own.
Fear, uncertainty and uh-huh.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Or buy the book and do exactly the opposite to everything it recommends.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It is essentially impossible to lapse from a unitary nation-state, like France or Hungary, where all people receive a unique ID number at birth, personal ID paper at 14, etc. No Facebook or Twitter will help you in face of vast gov't bureaucratic system. In a semi-anarchic place, like USA or Germany, where everybody plus dog is federally independent, maybe it will work.
Don't forget to add i'm so sorry 3>
One can legally disappear through the use of corporations and offshore corporations
I read about this in that memo I got from the Department of Redundancy Department.
many people of "middle eastern appearance" have never set foot anywhere near the middle east, which would make "staying" there rather difficult.
Take me for example. I have 0% middle eastern descent - I have Irish, English, a tiny bit of Scandanavian, two of my family tree paths are first fleeters, and yet I sometimes get asked where I'm from with Greece and "the middle east" being their two guesses.
I mean, the place just rocks!
licet differant, aequabitur
The fact that your name is Nikolas Georgus O'Abdullah wouldn't have anything to do with it?
What my name is has no bearing on what people think I look like given they don't know my name at the time.
My first name is a standard English fist name, well actually it's Hebrew I guess - in the set of names like Daniel, Jacob, and Samuel; which don't really have a middle eastern connotation in English currently.
And my last name is English, and was an English name from before the Norman Conquest.