What should one do to avoid showing up on databases? I have a friend who works for a “data mining” software company. This firm develops software that is intended to identify individuals who are likely to benefit from new, experimental drugs and therapies. According to him, the software will sweep through the internet, and go into all kinds of public databases-driver registrations, insurance subscribers, local tax records. Etc. Suppose you want to stay unknown? Should you own property through trusts? Have credit cards with P.O. Boxes as the mailing addresses? Or imitate the Mafia-don’t have a telephone at home? Is there any good website that shows how to preserve your privacy? Are there legal ways to escape detection by these data mining programs? I predict that this wil become a hot new industry-shielding yourself from being hounded!
I guess we could debate the definition of privacy, but it’s virtually impossible to keep your name out of public databases. If you’re name is already in these public databases, I’m not sure you can remove them.
To keep from getting into one of them, you need to avoid all of the following:
[ul]
[li]having credit cards or any kind of loans[/li][li]owning property[/li][li]having a landline phone[/li][li]having a drivers license or passport[/li][li]getting married[/li][li]having a child or enrolling one in school[/li][li]voting[/li][li]committing a crime[/li][li]servng as an officer in a public corporation[/li][/ul]
There are probably other things I’m forgetting, and I haven’t even started to hit on the private/commercial databases.
You could also add[ul]
[li]having a birth certificate[/li][li]being reported as a dependent on your parents tax returns[/li][li]having a SSN assigned[/li][li]having a bank account[/li][/ul]
About this time it becomes clear that it’s pretty much impossible, even if you go off and live as a hermit in the hills.
So forget about any idea of trying to pretend you don’t exist, and can remain hidden in this society – it won’t happen.
Concentrate instead on what I think is the real point of the OP: “shielding yourself from being hounded”. A big part of this is not letting yourself be bothered by this. Lots of people/businesses will try to contact you – but you do NOT have to answer.
Email filtering can eliminate a lot of the junk emails, then delete others just from looking at the subject line. (And don’t ever waste your time replying to the ‘please remove me from this list’ on spam emails.)
Postal junk mail: keep a wastebasket near your mailbox, and toss junk mail into it unopened. The Direct Mail Assn. removal service works some, but only for the more reputable mass mailers. And don’t bother trying to “get back” at them, by pasting their reply envelope to a brick or something. Those things don’t work, and just raise your own blood pressure. Just calmly toss them in the trash.
Phone calls: As soon as you realize it’s a junk call, say “I’m not interested” and hang up. If there is a pause after you say hello, it’s an automated call – hang up right then. Getting on the Do-Not-Call list helps somewhat, but businesses have so many loopholes that that list is becoming increasingly irrelevant (for example, any division of any company you do business with, or any other company they do business with, can call you despite you being on the list.) Of course, if you have a phone with caller id, you don’t even have to answer such calls at all. (This is an already existing example of the OP’s hot new industry – cell phones, caller id, etc. all to enable you to avoid unwanted phone calls.)
become amish. they tend to stay under the radar unless a trip to hospital or some sort of govermental thing happens. they rarely register with local, state, or federal goverment.
All the suggestion in post 2 and 3 are great, but they don’t work retroactively. Once your name is on thoses lists and they get sold/mined and then sold to another company and sold to another company and cross referenced with another database, there’s no getting out. You might, however be able to slow down.
Ha!
My mother has attended & purchased at Amish horse & harness auctions, so now she gets spam mail from the Amish!
(Of course, she doesn’t call it spam. Because it’s about horses & harnesses, she finds it interesting, even though she’s not in the market to buy any right now.)
Thats rubbish, there are thousands of successful criminals that are not in databases. The trick is simply to avoid getting caught.
Furthermore, through criminality, one can keep their income and assets private, as opposed to having to disclose them and submit that info into a giant db.
Based on the recent lost wallet thread, I would say that it is, indeed, possible to regain one’s privacy even after it’s been lost. There, filmyak had a full wallet, complete with multiple forms of identification, and the combined resources of the Dope still weren’t able to come up with any contact information for the guy.
There’s a book on the subject called “How to Be Invisible.” I don’t know if the author is on the up and up (he’s supposed to be virtually unfindable, but of course I’m sure St. Martin’s Press knows where to send the royalty check), but the effort to go underground is taken to the extreme in this book.
No one has mentioned the cloak of a corporation. Most of my adult life I’ve owned my own businesses. My checks are in the names of the businesses, as are credit cards, phone numbers, address. Nearly everything I do is through one or more of my business affiliations. One of which is property management, meaning I have to do thorough background checks on folks. I’ve only found my actual name in a rather obscure data base collection, though my businesses are readily available.
I haven’t purposely tried to become invisible, but it doesn’t hurt my feelings either.