Good book and great reference. All kinds of advice on protecting your identity. Hard work! ( )

Contains hardly any useful information and a lot of bragging and straight up bullshit. Pamphlet sized, parts reads like an ad others like a memoir. Sprinkled lightly with largely unactionable advice, mostly out of date and irrelevant, doubly so if you're not an American living the late 90s. I kept checking the publishing date, incredulous. ( )

Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace

Ahearn and Horan go over the importance of misinformation and disinformation. The authors correctly note that taking on a new identity is seldom fruitful, but if you must have legitimate digital and business needs, alternate names and citizenship are useful for transactions, especially when deciding who you trust is critical to maintaining your security. 4 stars for a decent checklist of areas to consider when taking steps to disappear. ( )

I can't remember where I found the pointer to this book. Or maybe I can, and I'm just giving you some disinformation in case you are compiling a dossier on my reading referrals.

This book encourages the above sort of paranoia. It's an interesting and informative read but I think it's hampered somewhat by the authorial voice, which often veers into what sounds like textbook noir-detective-speak. I get that a skip tracer needs to be hard-bitten and tough. Swell. Now, tell me what you came to say, without the grit in your teeth.

There's much valuable information here, though, if you are willing to sort through the extra padding. It's amazing how much of what one thinks of as one's own personal data is in fact public and free for the harvesting. I don't have any immediate plans to disappear for some unmarked island in the tropics (or do I?) but this book was worth reading anyway.
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