Privacy Matters

Electronic privacy, email, and postal mail:

Send all email regarding finance or business or litigation using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption. You can get information about PGP encryptors from: http://www.pgp.com/.

Check with your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to ensure that they don't provide information about your Internet usage patterns to third parties or in response to subpoenas.

If you are using Microsoft Word or Excel or Access, assign a password in order to view or open these files if they relate to business, finance, or litigation issues. This will keep prying eyes out. Make the passwords as long as possible. If you are using Microsoft Access, use the User Level Security Wizard to add user security to your database and also encrypt the database so it can't be scanned and decoded manually or with "snooping software".

Obtain statements from Microsoft of the following:

We do not reveal or provide to any third parties or governments access to tools, software, or methods that would facilitate breaking into our products once security or passwords are applied to data produced by our products.

Business dealing:

When you make application to any organization for any kind of service or benefit, ask the clerk what fields are optional and what fields are mandatory. Fill in the fewest fields you can on any application form to give people the minimum information possible about yourself.

Ensure that those people who you deal with relative to your business and financial dealings have signed a nondisclosure agreement regarding information about you and your accounts and dealings. This will prevent release of any information about you.

If you are an employer, avoid obtaining an employer ID number. If you hire only U.S. citizens and they work exclusively in the 50 states, there would appear to be no reason to have an employer ID number or to do withholding, unless of course the employees themselves insist on "volunteering". This will keep you out of the IRS' scrutiny.

General:

Buy and use a paper shredder. Destroy every piece of business or financial correspondence you are throwing away! That way no one can go through your trash and get evidence you don't want them having.

Do not provide your social security number to anyone unless you cannot obtain a benefit without it, and even then, ensure that the organization who takes it does not share that information with outside organizations or allow it to be used to search for you by outside organizations.

Maintain the original copies of all documents in a safe place away from your residence, and under a name other than yourself to avoid it being found. Keep as many of them as possible in encrypted electronic form on your hard disk. Scan them in with your scanner and save them to disk rather than paper form.

Do NOT use cordless or cellular phones in any conversations that you have regarding finances. The air waves are a public resource and it is perfectly legal to surveil and record otherwise confidential conversations without a warrant if they are transmitted over the air waves.

Excerpted from Family Guardian