Michael Bazzell

Michael Bazzell[1] has recommended MySudo on his podcast before. 1: https://inteltechniques.com/

Indeed it is. https://inteltechniques.com has a podcast on OSINT/privacy run by a guy who performs this service to make people disappear as best as possible (within realm of the law). His clients are mainly celebs, execs and domestic abuse victims. It is very difficult and expensive, as for full protection you need to register LLCs and legal trusts for many things like home ownership. Additionally because we live in a surveillance capitalism dystopia, one little mistake can ruin everything and cause you to start over.

While I applaud what this article is trying to do, the reality of it is that unless you're spending a large amount of time and money to remain anonymous, some portion of your information gets leaked online eventually and easily. It is a constant never-ending effort leading to (but not ending with) not having Amazon packages come to your house in your true name, registering your mortgage, utilities, and internet in other name(s) or businesses (which is no simple feat in itself), and risking all that work getting lost because you slipped once and updated your credit card address. The data removal services/sites may give temporary relief once, but the next time something flags an upload or update again you're right back to where you started. Michael Bazzell [1] has deep knowledge of what it takes and has published books on it, and it gets harder and more disrupting as time goes on, to where unless you're hiding from a known target or stalker it is almost not worth it. [1]: https://inteltechniques.com/

> Browser Brave. I keep extensions limited to reduce potential uniqueness. Unfortunately, I do use Linux. Would be nice to modify the fingerprint to be less bespoke, but I haven't taken the time to figure that out. >Social media I only use it through web browsers. Apps may be fine, but much harder to trust. GrapheneOS does make me feel better about it, but all the web apps now are great in mobile so it seems fine. Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell[1] is an excellent read on this topic. It provides insight into mostly practical tips and can always be watered down to meet your requirements. [1]: https://inteltechniques.com/book7.html

Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell is a great resource to learn how to limit exposure to these aggregator services. https://inteltechniques.com/book7.html

On the off chance that you are serious: get a Pixel phone, install Graphene OS, follow the mobile Extreme Privacy guide (https://inteltechniques.com/book7a.html), and be ready for inconveniences.

Yael's resource is amazing. Highly recommend this open source guide. Also check out Michael Bazzell's how to disappear guides: https://inteltechniques.com/links.html

This is an extremely common problem. Worse, Amazon doesn't seem to offer a way for authors to be identified as the legitimate author (ironic since they started as a book store). On his podcast Michael Bazzell[1] has detailed issues with trying to contact Amazon to report fraudulent copies of his book being sold and getting the reply that Amazon had determined that HE was an impostor trying to take down other impostors to eliminate competition for his pirated content! Short of Amazon being made to feel real pain in the form of lawsuits with massive judgements this simply won't change. The best an author can do is make noise and hope the din reaches the ears of someone at Amazon who can help. Here's to hoping the OP's post will do that. [1] https://inteltechniques.com/books.html

This is just plainly not true. MB at IntelTechniques publishes one of the best known removal workbooks in the industry. There's no reason you can't do the same to teach people who to contact to remove their data. See https://inteltechniques.com/workbook.html There is nothing stopping you from doing the same.

Two recommendations for everyone: 1. Check out the IntelTechniques workbook. You can a lot of this yourself for free. https://inteltechniques.com/workbook.html 2. If you want to hire someone, there are a bunch of similar options. This list was put together by a competitor, easyoptouts, but it seems pretty neutral: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M1YXTKmfs6rVDJHQVO3VhJQDpqqLfz… And a question for Optery: I tried your service but it mainly found people who aren't me. Are you working on improving identification?

I can also recommend his podcast at https://inteltechniques.com/podcast.html The last episode was about securing a smartphone (232-Anonymous Phone Update Part I)

Episode 211 of The Privacy Security & OSINT podcast did a pretty thorough analysis of the data collected by Plaid. Highly recommend a listen: https://inteltechniques.com/blog/2021/03/26/the-privacy-security-osint…

I highly recommend OneRep (https://onerep.com/) as a service to remove you from these websites. I've been using it myself for a while and it has saved me a lot of headache. For those of you who do want to remove all of the info yourself, I've found this is also a good resource: https://inteltechniques.com/data/workbook.pdf

I can highly recommend the Privacy, Security & OSINT Show but it really depends on how far you want to go: https://www.inteltechniques.com/podcast.html

First, review your threat model [0]. Then I recommend this podcast [1] for some ideas on how to scrub yourself from the internet. Realistically you’re not going to be able to remove anything close to all your footprints, but things like using GDPR can help. The amount of information on you also depends on the country you reside in. I think Americans in particular will have a tough time due to the number of people search websites and a laissez-faire attitude towards selling PII that IMHO should not be sold (DMV and voting data) [0] https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/your-security-plan [1] https://inteltechniques.com/podcast.html

There is a really interesting podcast about this subject. It's called the Privacy and Security Podcast. They talk about how you can get actual privacy in the modern world. Hint, it's a PITA and is really not worth it for most people. https://inteltechniques.com/podcast.html

One resource I haven't seen mentioned on HN much: Michael Bazzell is an expert on both sides of internet privacy. https://privacy-training.com/ vs. https://inteltechniques.com/ "Hiding from the Internet" vs. "Open Source Intelligence Techniques" https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Bazzell/e/B007GNUI92/ "The Complete Privacy & Security Podcast" (42 episodes so far) https://inteltechniques.com/podcast.html

I wouldn't put any stake into a truly permanent solution. Even if you strictly limit who you give your physical address to, or personal cell number, it'll probably leak out somehow with enough time. (ex. Your name, phone and address get stored in a 3rd parties address book outside of your control...) So you take it to an extreme. For example, grandma probably needs to know your address if she's ever to visit you, but everyone else gets a PO box. Maybe only your spouse really needs to know your actual cell phone number, everyone else can get a proxy. But that takes time and money to maintain (emphasis on time). IntelTechniques is a great resource for finding info on removing your data from "data brokers" in addition to the big credit reporting agencies. Quite a bit of information is provided for free on the site and associated podcast. You can also buy their book (or even hire their services). https://www.inteltechniques.com/links.html Don't tell fastpeoplesearch.com not to sell your information. Tell them to remove it.

Prepare to leave, even if it is not an 'option' right now. Make relationships with people smugglers today, not when you need it. Research which countries would accept you as a political refugee, which in your case is pretty clear cut as a journalist and what would be the best process. Don't only choose one country as part of your research, have a list in case one or more fall through. You will probably have to live in an easy to move to neutral country such as indonesia or the phillipines first while you apply. You might have to leave fast, so create a 'leave the country' go away backpack (aka go bag) and bring it with you everywhere, in case you can't actually go home. Install online cameras to see the state of your house before getting close to it in case you are raided or setup for an ambush. Turn off the cell phone when your close to where you live by a few km, use wifi where all your internet connection is piped through a VPN. Be prepared to abandon everything in your house if it comes to that, maybe distribute your important sentimental objects elsewhere with trusted friends or family or other secret storage spots. When you begin to stash such things, turn off all electronic devices with radios (wifi, bluetooth, cellphone, etc) or just do not bring them going there and coming back. Use cash for in person transactions from now on, maybe change your habits up. You may not be worried about general physical safety, but you might be targeted specifically. Michael…

LainZine - very similar to PagedOut: https://lainzine.org/archive Unredacted - Privacy/OSINT related. Only past issues are free. https://inteltechniques.com/magazine.html N-O-D-E - Hardware/DIY https://n-o-d-e.net/zine/

If you're US based, there's tons of data broker sites, and you can glue together the information for free as various brokers leak various bits (E.g. Some leak the address, others leak emails, others leak phone numbers). And that's by design for SEO reasons, they want you to be able to google someone with the information you have, so they can sell you the information you don't have. Some straight up list it all, and instead of selling people's information to other people, they sell removals to the informations owner. Presumably this is a loop hole to whatever legislation made most sites have a "Do Not Sell My Info" opt out. What you do is look up a data broker opt out guide, and that gives you a handy list of data brokers to search. E.g. https://inteltechniques.com/workbook.html

https://inteltechniques.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Image-2-1.png Capitalising the first letter of each package name makes it look jarring.

I would also be curious to learn how it impacts Early Warning Services which collects/reports data on bank accounts and transactions. The Privacy, Security, & OSINT Show did a podcast on it.[0] 0. https://inteltechniques.com/blog/2022/04/15/the-privacy-security-osint…

Her are the actual tools in question: https://inteltechniques.com/tools/

not a forum but this has good privacy and osint info: https://inteltechniques.com/podcast.html lots of content, you gotta weed through a lot to get the good stuff

As an exercise I once went through the process of manually requesting my information removed from most of the top brokers. It would be difficult to automate because the opt-out processes usually aren't straightforward like unsubscribing from an email list. Many sites make it purposely difficult and involve going through multiple steps, providing verification like a drivers license, and email confirmations. Here is a really good check list of different brokers: https://inteltechniques.com/data/workbook.pdf

OSINT https://inteltechniques.com/blog/2021/03/21/investigating-google-doc-o…

You can opt out, but it's a grueling, site-by-site process and they don't make it easy - often you have to do it several times. See https://inteltechniques.com/book7.html for some strategies. It's tortuous and should not be this way - we should really have national privacy legislation, but all the companies who are based on (or just get extra profit from) surveillance capitalism will fight such a thing tooth and nail.

> You can opt out, but it's a grueling, site-by-site process and they don't make it easy - often you have to do it several times. See https://inteltechniques.com/book7.html for some strategies. It's tortuous and should not be this way I totally agree with you about how unreasonably burdensome the process is (it probably took at least a solid 40 hours of effort for me to get my results mostly scrubbed from publicly accessible sites a few years ago). However, I think you have to put an asterisk next to "opt-out." In a lot of cases, your data might still be accessible in premium or specialized products (like those for law enforcement). I know of no law besides the California-specific CCPA that actually regulates opting-out, and a lot of these sites like like they're operated by sketchy people.

You can refer to this book[1] which lists links to delete your accounts [1]https://inteltechniques.com/data/workbook.pdf