Without the ability to keep secrets, individuals lose the capacity to distinguish themselves from others, to maintain independent lives, to be complete and autonomous persons. This does not mean that a person actually has to keep secrets to be autonomous, just that she must possess the ability to do so. The ability to keep secrets implies the ability to disclose secrets selectively, and so the capacity for selective disclosure at one’s own discretion is important to individual autonomy as well.
Secrecy is a form of power. The ability to protect a secret, to preserve one’s privacy, is a form of power. The ability to penetrate secrets, to learn them, to use them, is also a form of power. Secrecy empowers, secrecy protects, secrecy hurts. The ability to learn a person’s secrets without his or her knowledge — to pierce a person’s privacy in secret — is a greater power still.
We want to help you exercise your unalienable right to secrecy, or in other words, to have you and your property left alone.
Starting to vanish can seem like a massively complicated project. Please do not be intimidated but just take it one step at a time. Sure, you may feel overwhelmed and be wondering, “Where in the world do I start?”
This article will give you practical and actionable tips with as much value as possible to solve the particular issue or circumstance. Sometimes the tips are basic. Sometimes the tips are complex. But never will your time or attention be taken for granted with fluffy time wasting suggestions.
Sometimes this includes analysis of a law or court case, actual or potential uses of some technology or just current trends or events.
But at the end of the day we want to help you protect your privacy, decrease your risk of being an identity theft victim and doing so completely legally so you do not break any laws.
Five Things You Can Do
1. Here is a Free Privacy Guide that contains five easy ways to increase your privacy and is a quick introduction to actionable items you can do for free right now.
2. Get acquainted with Bitcoin. I have loved, written about and recommended Bitcoin for a long time and see it as a powerful tool when applying it to controlling privacy ever since. Bitcoin will become one of your most powerful tools because it makes so much possible. And protecting your Bitcoin, or Steem for that matter!, involves understanding how to use asymmetric cryptography to secure and protect private keys.
3. Read a few of these popular posts. If a lot of other people have found them useful then maybe you will too.
- How To Survive In Captivity - The principles of survival that special forces soldiers use apply to every day citizens as well. Learn how to survive captivity.
- What Liberty Dollar Should Have Learned From The Godfather - The first of three articles examining the Liberty Dollar case and looking at what Bernard von Nothaus should and should not have done.
- Why Bitcoin Acceptance Should Be A Litmus Test of Liberty Proponents - Merchants accepting bitcoins protect their customers from identity theft and political persecution when purchasing liberty orientated products and services.
- Stratfor Failed To Protect Their Customers By Not Accepting Bitcoin - Stratfor’s website was hacked posing a risk of identity theft for their subscribers. Stratfor could have prevented this by accepting BitCoins.
- Anonymous Web Surfing To Protect Your Internet Privacy - How you can take control of your Internet privacy.
- Ten Privacy Tips For Protecting Your Identity And Avoiding Identity Theft - Control your privacy by using these ten privacy tips for protecting your identity and avoiding identity theft.
- Remove Personal Information From The Internet - There are ways to remove personal information from the internet, like your address and phone number, from most of the websites that publish that kind of information.
- Avoid Surveillance Cameras - Video camera surveillance is everywhere. There are some weaknesses to video surveillance systems which are exploited to avoid video camera surveillance and facial recognition.
- Avoid Private Investigators - There are many reasons why an investigator might be conducting surveillance on you. Find out how to avoid private investigator surveillance.
- Keep Your Home Address To Yourself - Property ownership is a matter of public record. Here are three ways to keep your property ownership out of public records.
- Keep Your Assets Hidden In Plain Sight - Keep your name out of public records and keep your assets hidden in plain sight.
- Three Ways To Hide Valuables At Home - Three ways to hide valuables at home shows you how to protect your stuff right under your nose without relying on anybody else to help you.
- Tim Ferris Is California's Bitch - When He Does Not Have To Be - CA passed a law taxing out-of-state retailers with CA affiliates. Amazon terminated affiliate’s including Tim Ferris who lost a five figure monthly income.
- Do You Need To Profitably Sue A TSA Agent? - Profitably suing a TSA agent individually may be the only way to stop them from touching your genitals. Learn how to keep your privates private.
- Taking Raw Food Recipes Underground - Raw food recipes require unprocessed food in its natural state. Legislatures and police agencies are making unprocessed food harder to find.
- Modern Hawala - Flying money. Learn about this ancient system for moving money around the world in the blink of an eye. Extremely useful in conjunction with Bitcoin.
4. Consider watching some videos at How To Vanish TV. These are often included in articles we write as examples or solutions but you may feel like going through the playlist anyway.
5. The more people who apply privacy hygiene the safer and more private we all are because you could protect your privacy only to have one of your friends inadvertently breach it. Even Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg, complained about a family photo being posted to Facebook and the shared with the public.
Conclusion
So please consider sharing our content with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter. This should stir some interesting discussions and help all of us be safer by employing privacy hygiene practices.And we would love to hear from fellow Steemers on why privacy is so important. Please share your stories, strategies, tips and tricks in the comments so help us all out. Thanks!