Recently by Bill Rounds: Remove Personal Information From the Internet

People always ask about the privacy books I read and recommend. I have several books and many are very good. They can be very helpful companions to How To Vanish the book, so I thought I would share my library with you.

I have already written about The Sovereign Individual which gives a good big-picture view of the future of large organizations and individuals regarding privacy. The other books that I recommend are The Lifeboat Strategy by Mark Nestmann, How To Be Invisible by J.J. Luna, and How To Disappear by Frank Ahearn.

The Lifeboat Strategy

The Lifeboat Strategy is a great source for reference material on the statutes, historical developments, background information and many other things relating to privacy. It also has several actionable tips and suggestions to better protect your information and avoid violating the law. This book is impeccably researched, with hundreds and hundreds of citations to original sources.

The author, Mark Nestmann, is a trusted expert on privacy. His privacy recommendations and observations are very trustworthy.

Criticism

This book has a lot of detailed information that is interesting but not necessary for someone who wants to protect as much privacy as possible with the least amount of effort.

Even so, as reference material and as interesting background with some applicable law, this book is a great one to have in any privacy library.

How To Be Invisible

If you want to hear how to protect privacy from someone who had to do it for many years while living in a dictatorship, How To Be Invisible is a great book. J.J. Luna offers a lot of practical and useful tips on how to protect your privacy in many areas of your life. The book is full of actual stories and situations where the privacy tips were either needed or helpful from a wide range of people. At just over 200 pages, this book will not be beyond the time constraints of most people to read and digest.

J.J. Luna is another well-respected expert on privacy and really knows what he is talking about.

Criticism

How To Be Invisible is shorter and easier to read than The Lifeboat Strategy, but the actionable tips are still somewhat buried among information that is not as actionable. Having to separate the actionable information from the rest can still take more time and effort than some readers might want to give.

How To Be Invisible is another great book to have for anyone who wants to protect their personal information.

How To Disappear

How To Disappear has very explicit steps and easy to follow, actionable items to protect privacy. This book shows readers how to completely drop off the map so that they are almost impossible to find. How To Disappear shows readers the most advanced and most robust ways to protect their privacy.

This book is also very exciting. There are plenty of compelling anecdotes about people who either needed help or who had successfully eliminated the threats to their privacy.

Frank Ahearn is a former skip tracer. His job was to track down people that have tried very hard to protect their privacy. He shares, not only the skills needed to beat a skip tracer, but he does a great job at conveying the frame of mind a person might have if they are trying to hunt you down. He also helps readers establish the right frame of mind needed to evade prying eyes of the best skip tracers in the world.

Criticism

How To Disappear is mainly targeted at people who really want to completely be erased from the map. Following through means a complete change in lifestyle that is very expensive, requires extreme planning, will cut you off from friends and family except for very limited contact, and will probably mean starting a new life in another country.

There are still a lot of useful tips and techniques for the average person who just wants to keep some of their information from being public. It will take more time and effort to read through and separate the things that the average person will find useful from the extreme cases. Someone who wants to completely disappear probably won’t be able to do it right without consulting an expert to help them.

Even though it demonstrates some very extreme measures, most people who are interested in privacy would find this book useful and entertaining.

Conclusion

I have all of these books. I like them all. All of the authors are experts. There are plenty of other books that are good too. I haven’t had a chance to read them all. If you are interested in privacy you will probably find The Sovereign Individual, The Lifeboat Strategy, How To Be Invisible, and How To Disappear to be worth buying.

Reprinted with permission from How to Vanish.

Bill Rounds, J.D. is a California attorney. He holds a degree in Accounting from the University of Utah and a law degree from California Western School of Law. He practices civil litigation, domestic and foreign business entity formation and transactions, criminal defense and privacy law. He is a strong advocate of personal and financial freedom and civil liberties.

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