This year I will be purchasing my first home and moving. My main concern as it comes to privacy is the personal information of me and my spouse being exposed to the general public. I am concerned about protecting my family and myself from any random person snooping on our information (even if that’s unlikely I’m uncomfortable with my home address being so easy to find)
Question:
Can anyone give me advice on how I should appraoch keeping my personally identifiable information and new address private. I want to have a plan in place before I buy a new home so that I start off on the right food. I’m uncomfortable with the idea that someone could lookup my name and know where I live.
No idea how it works, but looks like some states have something called “public records protections” where you can hide your real address from public records. You can try looking it up and see if your state has it.
1. Set up a PO box, UPS mailbox, or other mailing address before closing.
Use that address for:
lender correspondence
utility accounts
insurance
HOA
tax mailing address
any account that appears on your credit report
2. Put the house title under a trust
3. Don’t ever vote for anything . If you have already, remove your voter registration. When you renew your license/ID with DMV never opt-in voter registration.Voter residence must be a real address so there’s no dodging it.
4. Opt out of data brokers
Experian and Aura cover a lot of sites
If you ever had a California ID or address linked to you (credit report) you can use privacy.ca.gov/drop as well
5. Private social media
6. Be careful how you distribute your information.
I was curious how every number I bought (even prepaid) kept appearing on my credit report within a month. Then I realized I have a credit card with my bank so every time I updated my number with the bank that number was included in credit reporting. Best to have 2 eSIMS for talking to others and managing accounts.
In the USA it wound be very hard because of data brokers, they are a real nuisance. One mistake and it’s out and it will never be effectively mitigated by using opt outs. Disconnecting house from identity is a very harder goal. It will take a ton of work. Also your family would have to follow along.
This is an excellent video explaining data brokers. Highly recommend because of your threat model. Even though it’s a bit long.
Turns out there’s a bunch of different types. Health, financial, risk, and people search (might be forgetting one). That last one is the one you are protecting against. But they all definitely share everything so really you have to protect against all of them.
Perhaps a registered agent could help in some scenarios you would encounter. No experience with any, this link is from search.
To add on to what @iHateKYC2 said with the actual mitigations suggestions, which are probably more helpful than what you’ll read past here.
It’s kind of obvious but, don’t give it out to anyone. Don’t let family give it out to anyone. I’m not sure of the mechanisms to do that.
Assume any time you enter your address into a paper or online form, it’s getting maximally utilized to spy on you, create a profile, shared, sold, etc. And most importantly for you, sold to a people search website in order to sell your dox( maybe it’s debatable whether address is public info).
The rest I was gonna give that ihatekyc covered better:
You can’t give it out for medical purposes(super prone to data breaches and HIPAA is not sufficient at all), can’t give it out for delivering packages. Perhaps you would be okay for delivering packages addressed to initials or “package recipient” or “lastname initial family”. Amazon doesn’t seem care what name to deliver.
Don’t give it out when you register to vote, don’t give it out when you get any licenses or documentation. Definitely don’t give it out to any business. Even if a business like CVS, for example, isn’t a data broker, they still definitely would give it out though the countless third party software tools they use.
Banks and credit cards are for sure off limits.
Voter registrations, property deeds, court documents, marriage/divorce records, motor vehicle records, professional licenses, and census data.
retailers, loyalty programs, warranty registrations, credit bureaus, and mobile app developers
Definitely never sign up on any website (that’s not KYC) with your real info. It’s not required.
Use email aliasing might help but maybe not considering you didn’t ask about all links, just links from identity to home. Actually, definitely use email aliases. Can’t hurt and could help with data brokers.
Other basic stuff wouldn’t hurt as well like random usernames generated by password manager.
Unfortunately this goal seems to be effectively impossible for anyone that isn’t single and lives alone, has large amounts of disposable income and time, and this is a large portion of their work. Even then it would be hard to complete fully.
I’m not trying to discourage OP. If they are dedicated I’m fully supportive of doing all the stuff described.
If it’s too overwhelming to do a complete setup, just do the stuff you can and focus on data minimization and combine that with the opt outs. Don’t give up on the whole thing when you can still implement some ideas. That would be effective for a simple search from a regular person I assume.
As long as you are a part of society it would be possible for a determined adversary to connect the dots. Hell, lots of billionaires have their flights tracked, and they have billions of dollars.
Edit:
One thing I realize. You could make this a lot easier by not trying to do modern things like credit cards with the goal in mind. Just don’t use them. Obviously sacrifices convenience but it’s the ultimate data minimization.
Not necessary. I’m guessing you mean a higher chance of burglary. I have seen people debating it, but it was only theoretical. Do we have data on this?
Bluring home on streetview would do nothing to accomplish OP’s goal and wouldn’t improve privacy. An OSINTer would see that and it would help them identify OP imo.
I’d only do this if there’s something currently on Google Maps in the frame of my house, that I don’t want people seeing (ex: you dumping the trash, a certain car, relative, etc.)
Trying to get complete privacy is clearly very difficult. If you didn’t set up the house in a trust, and assumung your goal is avoiding general surveillance, would it still be worth it to use a PO box/PMB and that kind of stuff even if your name is already associated with the house purchase?
Don’t quote me on this, but I believe this might only be possible once the house is paid off. If the house if paid all at once, then using a trust/LLC you can buy the house directly and move it under a trust. That is what I have heard from someone who tried to buy a house under a trust, but was not able to due to them not paying for all of it at once.
I wouldn’t recommend paying for data removal. Perhaps you have had better luck than me. I paid once for Kanary, I did 1/4 of the lifting while paying them to do the job. It’s better to do it yourself in my opinion. Google Results For You, Michael Bazzells workbook, and just searching your name online to see what shows up are good ways to get started.
. Yea family is the weakest link even if you’re a privacy oriented individual.