Disappearing in the USA and re-establishing a middle or upper-middle class lifestyle elsewhere in the USA with a new identity is probably near impossible nowadays. Back in e.g. 1940? Easy. Not now.
Disappearing in the USA and establishing a working poor to kinda homeless new identity is rather easy. It’d be a tough life, but presumably better all things considered, than the one you’re choosing to abandon. And if the life you’re abandoning is itself working poor, maybe not all tougher.
Vast sections of the US populace don’t have much medical care, don’t have credit cards, don’t have bank accounts. If they have a car it’s a beater that isn’t really registered or insured. More likely they don’t own a car. Lotta work for cash, etc.
There are certainly a few Dopers who’ve lived, or live, that lifestyle & can fill us in. For the rest of us it’s an unfamiliar world we’re likely to grossly misunderstand.
I’ve done background searches for just about everyone I’ve ever known using Been Verified and have been able to find all but a couple. Most people can be found through a combination of Google, prison records, obits and paid for search engines. Many people I searched for are already dead and I was able to also view their obituaries and newspaper reports.
But a few people I knew in college who where at the top of the class were no where to be found. So I contacted mutual friends, turned out that they were very successful and living an expat life overseas for most of their lives.
I haven’t contacted most of my old friends acquaintances, just curious really.
You won’t find shit about me on Been Verified or any of those other aggregators. I religiously ask them to delete me which they will if you make a request. If my social media didn’t have my actual name, you’d never find me that way.
That said, around eight years ago, my then girlfriend was considering a business collaboration with a friend of hers. I was aware of this dude because she’d mention him from time to time but nothing more than surface information. When she told me about the potential collab, I checked out his Facebook page. My hackles went straight up. He was clearly a fucking fraud. I paid a local private investigator $75 for a background check. Half an hour later I got a full report with his addresses, criminal history (just speeding tickets), credit history (really bad), former addresses, ex wife’s name and his social security number.
This more true now than it was during the Covid lockdown when I went on my adventure into the past. People are becoming more aware of how much information is out there, but still unlike you most people still don’t bother to hide their tracks from just casual inquiries.
Still, many people do just disappear by leaving the country without even intending to “drop out” of society. While many do so with the intention of doing hiding from the past.
It’s amazing how well leaving the country works. American credit agencies and public agencies are utterly incapable of entering a foreign address, so for all intents and purposes I disappeared when I left the country. My name is unique, so Google can find me for you instantly, but if I had wanted to disappear, I’d just do a legal name change in this country. No one in the USA looking for me would ever think to check Canadian public records.
I have friends with little to no internet presence. Their jobs haven’t put their names online, they don’t make donations that are publically recorded, don’t have athletic results in online local news, etc. and they’ve killed their info on aggregating sites.
I have friends like that, don’t even have cable TV. But they have bought property or have been arrested, so they show up on searches. Or they are tied to someone who does show up, such as a spouse, neighbor or known associate.
Its only recent that more and more people are having their information purposly scrubbed. I’ve thought about it myself, but haven’t gotten around to it, not a high priority.
Each of those sites are a little different but I’ve found that Googling “how do I get removed from XSite” works perfectly and you’ll usually be gone in a day. They don’t even check if you’re the real person if asked in my experience so I could clean out anyone.
There are tons of them. PeopleFinder, Spokeo, Intelius, BeenVerified off the top of my head and many obscure ones. Best bet is to Google your name and see what pops up.
TruePeopleSearch.com is another one. There’s an alarming amount of information about you on there, including how much equity you have in your house, when you bought it and how much you paid for it. Some of the personal information (relatives, possible associates, former telephone numbers and addresses) is wrong. According to them, my father (who passed away in 2002) is 126 years old now.
I belong to a FB page called Whereabouts Unknown. It focuses on disappearances in Canada. There are lots of cases. I wonder if “ease” has something to do with it. There are countess places to hide a body in Canada.
Let’s talk about Zoe McLellan. She was a relatively successful actress. She was (is?) married. Her husband and her were splitting up and they were contesting custody of their son. In 2019, she and the child disappeared. There’s been an open arrest warrant on her since 2021. But as far as I know, her whereabouts are unknown.
So where is she? There’s no evidence she’s dead. I doubt she’s living on the street or out in the wilderness. So she probably has an apartment somewhere using a fake identity and she’s working low end jobs that pay in cash.
Big difference between “disappeared” as in murdered and dumped by somebody else versus “disappeared” as in ran away on their own and established a new life as a new identity.
I agree that some good fraction of “disappearances” are murders. Or kidnapping / enslavements if they’re young/cute enough.
It’s the other kind of “disappearances” that are of interest here.
And remember that there are degrees of disappear. I could move to another location and continue to use my original SS number and a PO Box address to get a job. Once that is done, change my name, legally or practically, and continue life. Unless the Federal Government is intensely looking for me, I don’t think that last use of the SS would be available to anyone. Haven’t tried it though.
People are becoming more aware of how much information is out there, but still unlike you most people still don’t bother to hide their tracks from just casual inquiries.