The information contained in this e-book is taken from

How to be Invisible (Saint Martins Press, New York)

2012 by Canary Islands Press. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. The publisher has used its best efforts in preparing this Report, and the information provided herein is provided "as is." Canary Islands Press makes no representation or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Why and How to Separate Your Name From Your Home Address

hen the doorbell rang on that January afternoon, a young housewife opened her apartment door to find a slim, ordinary looking man of about twenty-eight standing at the threshold. He was a stranger to her.

Are you Mrs. Allen? he asked. Yes, I am. Is your husband home? No, she replied, he isnt here now. Gee, Im sorry, he said. I know him from Norwalk, Connecticut. I thought this was his early day. Maybe Ill come back tonight. He seemed rather well acquainted with her husband, a route salesman in Connecticut for a bakery company. The caller half-turned to go, then stopped and apologetically asked, Could I have a drink of water? Sure, she said, wait here a second. Leaving him at the door, Mrs. Allen went into the kitchen. When she returned, she found that he had walked through the foyer into the living room and was seated on the sofa. . . . The caller continued to deceive Mrs. Allen and then suddenly struck her down and prepared to rape her. At that moment, the telephone rang. He jumped up and ran from the apartment, slamming the door behind him. But in the years to come, more than two hundred women were not so fortunate. Their telephones did not ring. In each case, the caller gained entrance by telling the wife he knew her husband, and after gaining entrance through subterfuge, he raped and killed her, then burglarized the home. In each case it was the husbands themselves who had unwittingly made the crime possible. They had picked up a neatly-dressed hitchhikerGeorge Joseph Cvekwho said he was from Boy's Town, Nebraska, and given him a ride. When Cvek was dropped off, he asked the driver's for their home address so he could show his appreciated for the ride by mailing him a small gift. At that instant, each husband sealed his wifes death warrant. (This account was taken from the book Diary of a D.A. by Martin M. Frank, formerly an assistant district attorney in the Bronx.)

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More than half the people who come to me for help are at the time receiving both mail and packages at their home address. In my opinion, this is an incredible error, a matter of life and death.

An extreme viewpoint? Mike Ketcher of Burnsville, Minnesota, editor of The Financial Privacy Report, certainly doesnt think so. He hired Yon Son Moon, a divorced woman, to work in his office. Yon Sons ex-husband, Jae Choe, had been harassing her for years. When Mike hired Yon Son, Choe was furious. Eventually he went on a rampage, shooting Yon Son, their 14-year-old son John, and two policemen, after which he killed himself. The publisher of the newsletter, Daniel Rosenthal, sums up the two important lessons learned, as follows:

FIRST, if you think the police are there to protect you, let me tell you differently. Yon Soon had a restraining order against Choe. So did we, at our home and our office. But the police ignored our repeated requests to enforce these restraining orders, despite Choes continual violations and threats. On several occasions they literally laughed at our requests for enforcement. SECOND, when the police dont work, privacy DOES work. The only person in our company that was truly safe was Mike Ketcher. He was safe because he kept his personal affairs so private that Mr. Choe couldnt find him.

Hiding your home address is not easy, but its doable, one step at a time. The first step is to immediately stop sending and receiving mail at your home address.

MAIL THEFT

A Seattle newspaper runs a "Rant & Rave" section each Sunday. Readers can call in during the week with whatever they wish to praise or condemn. Heres one of them:

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A big rant to the felon who stole our outgoing U.S. mail, forcing several people to close bank accounts and depriving friends and relatives of holiday greetings and children and grandchildren of their Christmas checks.

Does anything about this rant sound a little strange to you? What if the reader's message had started out like this?

A big rant to the person who saw us park our car on the street, loaded with Christmas packages, and walk away. Although we did leave the doors open and the key in the ignition, he had no right to get in and drive away.

When you walk out to the curb, place your mail in the box, and raise the red flag, your mail is as venerable to theft as your car would be if you left the key in it and the doors open. Every day more than one hundred thousand residential mailboxes in the United States are burglarized. This applies to mail being received both in the city and in the country, both in private homes and in apartment complexes. In Hammond, Indiana, before they were finally arrested, two men and a woman went from door to door but did not knock or ring any bells. The neighbors saw nothing more suspicious than each person depositing an advertising brochure in each mailbox. What they didn't see was the sleight of hand when the person traded the brochure for whatever mail was in the box. More than a year prior to the rant about theft from a mailbox, the same Seattle newspaper had run a series of articles warning of mail theft not only from home mailboxes but from mail collection boxes on the street, plus the boxes used at thousands of apartments, condominiums, and commercial buildings in the Pacific Northwest. For months, thieves had been using counterfeit arrow keys.'' Each arrow key provides access to about 2,500 mail collection boxes, more than 10,000 apartments and condominiums, and virtually all office and commercial buildings in the region. (The keys give postal workers easy access to the mailboxes, making it easier for them to pick up and deliver messages and packages.)

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Readers were urged to stop using outside mailboxes to deposit mail, including their own home mailboxes. Instead, they were to deposit mail only inside a post office. In addition to professional thieves, it was said that many others have been stealing mail: drug addicts, to support their habit; teenagers, looking for cash; petty thieves, looking for any number of things. In the article, headlined "THEFT OF MAIL A PROBLEM AT OUR DOORSTEP,'' U.S. Postal Inspector Jim Bordenet voiced mail security concerns.

"Thieves rifle outgoing mail for checks written to pay bills. They then alter the checks so they can cash them for large amounts. He suggests people not put outgoing mail into their own boxes, and especially advises against using the red flag, which is a signal to thieves. "Thieves sometimes follow carriers around and steal incoming mail," he said. "They're typically looking for boxes of checks and credit-card offers.''

I will spare you the flurry of follow-up articles and letters to the editor that followed publication of the article just quoted. Some of the questions raised were:

Why didn't the Postal Service warn the public about such thefts years ago?

Why was nothing said until the thefts were exposed by the local newspapers?

Whyeven nowis the problem not being solved?

Another article, this one from the McClatchey Newspapers, is datelined Sacramento, California and titled "Post Office Fights Mailbox Theft". It reports that hundreds of pieces of mail are stolen daily in the Sacramento area. In rural areas the criminals watch for raised red flags, the signal that outgoing mail is inside. Others pry open ``cluster boxes'' at apartment complexes or housing developments and steal everybody's mail at the same time. In some cases they even pry open the standard blue

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U.S. mail collection boxes. The article quotes Tom Hall, a postal inspector who investigates mail theft from Sacramento to the Oregon border:

``Today, thanks to chemicals and computers, thieves can use almost any kind of financial information to commit a variety of financial crimes. If you write a check to a utility and a bad guy gets it, he can 'wash' the utility's name off and make the check out to himself in a higher amount. With that one check, he can also make himself a whole new set of checks under your name.''

Even worse, continues the article, "some criminals 'assume' the victim's identity and apply for credit cards in the victim's name.''

In an upscale neighborhood in Campbell, California, mail was being stolen on a regular basis. The thief was an elegant-appearing woman who dressed in expensive clothing so that she would not attract attention when she walked up to houses and stole the mail. Remember, all these thieves need is your name, address, account number and credit information. They then get on the phone and order merchandise through catalogues. If your home is vacant during the day, they may even have the products sent to your home. They'll just park along our street and wait for FedEx or UPS to swing by! My advice, therefore, is to deposit all outgoing mail inside a local post office. You will thus protect your outgoing mail not only from random theft but from having it surreptitiously read. (Some unscrupulous PIs may "borrow'' the mail from your home mailbox, read it, and return it the next day, apparently unopened.) However, if dropping your mail off at a post office is not practical, perhaps you could drop it off at work. (Check first, of course, to see where that mail is dropped off.) Or, you might drop it in one of those big blue mailboxes at shopping centers and other public places. Even there, however, it is best to do it just before the listed pickup time. If you are still in doubt about the dangers of mail theft, do this: Google. "mail theft." (Enclose the two words with quotation marks, as shown). Youll get about a quarter of a million sites to check out.

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Mail forwarding application

Do not check the little circle marked Permanent. If you do, your name will go into the Postal Services National Change of Address list and this list of persons that have moved is sold to the commercial mail-list folks and thus your name and new address will go into countless computers. Instead, check the Temporary box and give a date when this is to end. At that point, notify the post office that you are closing the box and do not wish to have any mail forwarded. Mail will then be returned to sender.

Take this immediate step to protect your mail

If you are presently receiving mail at home, turn in a forwarding address. But where should this mail go? Certainly not to any permanent address you will use in the future. If you presently have a P.O. Box, chose that address. Or, rent a box at a commercial mailreceiving agency (CMRA). If you have children at home, there will be an additional benefit. When mail is received at home rather than elsewhere, a curious childor teen may open a letter that has a bank statement, a notice from a creditor, bad news from a law firm, or something worse. The use of a ghost address will avoid this possibility.

Add a faraway ghost address for sensitive mail

Why not use an address in Alaskaas I dowhen you open a new bank account? The same address can be used as a business address, for filling out an online form, or for any other purpose where you prefer not to reveal any clue as to where you actually live. The most common use is as the addresses of a New Mexico Limited Liability Company (LLC) that owns a vehicle or real estate.

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Another option is to use a ghost address in Spains Canary Islands, located off the coast of Morocco. This is especially useful for those who travel, since all incoming mail can be scanned and then emailed to you, thus avoiding the need to physically receive mail at any address whatsoever.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

How to be Invisible can be obtained at Amazon.com.

JJ Luna: Blog: Web site:

JJL@canaryislandspress.com http://blog.invisible-privacy.com http://www.canaryislandspress.com

CONTACTS
Ghost addresses in Alaska and in Spains Canary islands: Go to http://canaryislandspress.com/index.cfm/page/Address/index.htm E-book Invisible Money Go to http://www.canaryislandspress.com/index.cfm/page/invisiblemoney/index.htm Information about hiding vehicle ownership with a limited liability company Contact Rosie Enriquez: rosie@senoritarosie.com

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