IntelTechniques

Extreme Privacy

What It Takes to Disappear - 5th Edition (2024)

30 Sections | 228 Chronological Tasks | 340,000 Words | 590 Pages | Paperback & Digital

Michael Bazzell has helped hundreds of celebrities, billionaires, and everyday citizens disappear completely from public view. He is now known in Hollywood as the guy who "fixes" things. Many of his previous books about privacy were mostly REACTIVE and he focused on ways to hide information, clean up an online presence, and sanitize public records to avoid unwanted exposure. This textbook is PROACTIVE. It is about starting over. It is the complete guide that he would give to any new client in an extreme situation. It leaves nothing out and provides explicit details of every step he takes to make someone completely disappear, including legal documents and a chronological order of tasks. For many, this is the only manual needed to secure a new private life.

5th Edition Changes & Summary

If you have the 4th edition of this book, you may want to know what has changed in this 5th edition. This is not a simple facelift, as I have drastically changed the flow, content, and goals for this edition, as follows.

First, I no longer present strategies which I believe are not optimal. In the previous edition, I delivered my recommendations, and then followed with alternative options for those who did not want to go the extreme route. With this book, I spend more time on the ideal solutions while trying to avoid compromises.

Second, I restructured chapters into sections, and isolated specific tasks for easier execution. In the previous edition, I presented huge chapters which covered a lot of ground. As one example, the mobile devices chapter was 77 pages and covered everything from selection and configuration of a mobile device all the way through DNS, VoIP options, and advanced applications. People were simply overwhelmed with the amount of information. In this book, I isolate each individual topic into its own "task". This allows readers to focus on one specific step, and may offer a feeling of accomplishment once the task is complete. In this example, the mobile devices section is now split into dozens of bite-size tasks which can each easily be completed in order.

Third, I offer a more chronological program. During a consult in late 2023, a client shared that she had read the previous edition twice, but was still very confused about the order of events ideal for her. Her voice was in my head while I wrote this updated work. In this edition, I have reorganized all tasks to flow in the most ideal order for most readers. This eliminates some of the confusion about finishing one task before starting another, or the need to wait for a service to be activated before proceeding with the next step. Every task in this guide is independent of the next, as long as they are followed in order.

Finally, all expired and outdated resources were replaced with new methods throughout every chapter. The outline is below.

Introduction
Section One: Linux Computers
Section Two: macOS Computers
Section Three: GrapheneOS Mobile Devices
Section Four: iOS Mobile Devices
Section Five: Mobile Device Strategies
Section Six: Secure Communications
Section Seven: Web Browsers
Section Eight: Passwords & 2FA
Section Nine: Secure Email, Calendars & Contacts
Section Ten: VoIP Telephone Numbers
Section Eleven: VPNs & DNS
Section Twelve: Firewalls & Wi-Fi
Section Thirteen: Self-Hosted Data
Section Fourteen: Virtual Machines (VMs)
Section Fifteen: Alias Names
Section Sixteen: Mailing Addresses
Section Seventeen: Private Payments
Section Eighteen: Estate Planning
Section Nineteen: Employment
Section Twenty: Private Lodging
Section Twenty-One: Private Homes
Section Twenty-Two: Private Vehicles
Section Twenty-Three: Privacy Lifestyle
Section Twenty-Four: Nomad Lifestyle
Section Twenty-Five: Data Requests
Section Twenty-Six: Data Freezes
Section Twenty-Seven: Disinformation
Section Twenty-Eight: Disaster Preparation
Section Twenty-Nine: Death Preparation
Section Thirty: My Successes & Failures
CONCLUSION