I’ve read many good books in my lifetime, but only several of them had major impacts on my life. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was the first, followed by Warren Farrell’s Why Men Are the Way They Are, and Ludwig von Mises’ treatise on economics, Human Action. This is essentially an endorsement for another life-altering book: J. J. Luna’s step-by-step guide to protecting your assets, your identity, and your life:How To Be Invisible. I am in no way affiliated with the author, but I am a very satisfied customer and reader. Highly recommended, five stars, by yours truly.
From inside the back jacket, “J. J. Luna spent eleven years running a secret operation in Franco’s Spain, a fascist state notorious for the brutality and tenacity of its secret police. His skill at covering his tracks has saved his life several times. He now works as a consultant, helping other people–and their assets–to simply…disappear.”
From the front jacket, “”Read this meticulously researched and highly entertaining book, learn its techniques…then vanish in plain sight!” — Lieutenant Patrick Picciarelli, NYPD (ret.)….””
From the back jacket, “”J. J. Luna gives the smartest, sanest, and most practical advice on just how to stay out of sight in the real world. Buy this book if you value your privacy. — Ned Beaumont, author….””
As a teacher, I can truly appreciate this book, from the format alone. It is a complete course on the steps that you need to take to ensure your privacy and security in the Information Age. From e-mail to credit cards, Post Office Boxes to Mail Boxes Etc., SSNs to drivers licenses, passports to state ID cards, signatures to nominees, dumpster diving to shredding documents, buying property to registering vehicles, bank accounts to hiding gold, dead drops to encryption, secure addresses to anonymous identities, the author covers them all.
This book is full of very simple, real world solutions to common everyday privacy and security issues. If followed, the author’s recommendations can save you many thousands of dollars, give you peace of mind, enable you to live as an anonymous citizen, free from prying eyes and government intrusion, and possibly even save your life. At the end, he even gives the reader a test to solve a short privacy case study based on what the reader should have learned by reading the book.
You don’t have to employ all of his recommendations, but there are several that must not be ignored. Rather than simply give them away, I will refer you to the book. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed, and if you value your privacy at all, you will forever change the way you live after reading this book.
Some lifestyle changes recommended in the book are easier than others, and some are more effective than others, but by combining several of his recommended tactics you can easily construct an (almost) impenetrable privacy wall around yourself. You are free to pick your own level of privacy from the four that he describes:
— “Level One: Very basic, economical moves that will give you more privacy than 98 percent of the general population….The opposition might have to pay a private investigator several hundred dollars to track you down.”
— “Level Two: The PI may now charge several thousand dollars to track you down.”
— “Level Three: You and your family have now taken some serious privacy measures….The black-hat boys and/or law firms may have to pay a PI some truly serious money to track you down. Are you worth that much to them? If not, sleep well.” Note: this is the author’s own level of privacy.
— “Level Four: At this level you are duplicating the federal Witness Security Program…for criminals protected by the U.S. government. When the feds do it for a felon, it’s legal. When you do it for yourself, it’s illegal.”
It should be noted that if the federal government (or anyone else with unlimited time and money) is looking for you, they will eventually find you. This book was not written for Level Four people, it was written for citizens who value their privacy and are willing to take the necessary steps to preserve and protect it.
If you are interested in reading one chapter from this truly fascinating book, it’s available online . In addition, the author updates the book online periodically, but you need the password from the book to access the newest information. (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, New York, c. 2000, 258 pp.)
Note: this is my answer to all of those readers who keep asking me why I use a pen name. Read the book, or as someone once said, “Do your homework.”