Disinformation and digital disappearance

Former skip tracer Frank Ahearn says disinformation is a key strategy for "disappearing" digitally. Excerpted from chapter 7 of his book How to Disappear Completely.

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By Frank Ahearn

May 03, 2011 — CSO —

An excerpt from Chapter 7—Disinformation—of How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace. (Copyright 2010 Lyons Press / Globe Pequot Press—www.globepequot.com. Used by permission.)

Also read an exclusive Q&A with Ahearn on CSOonline.com.


Disinformation is my favorite part of disappearing, because it brings my skip tracer's talent for deception into play.

In the first step of your disappearing act, misinformation, you took what was out there on you and hid it from view. Now you're going to make finding you even more difficult by creating a bunch of bogus trails for your pursuer to follow. You'll do this with two goals in mind:

Keep your hunter busy searching for you in the wrong place, and make the file on you as thick, frustrating, and expensive to detangle as possible.

When I was a skip tracer, my buddies and I prayed we'd get just enough information to find our targets—no more, no less. Too little information and the trail would go cold, but too much and we couldn't tell the bogus trails from the real ones.

When people pick up and disappear, one common and crucial mistake they make is that they do not attempt to keep their hunters busy. If you just leave one trail, however hard you've tried to cover it, you allow your pursuer the opportunity to search it thoroughly. Don't give him that luxury. Skip tracers are some of the quickest and most imaginative people you'll meet, if I do say so myself, and if they're on the right trail, they'll probably find you.

Therefore, it is very important that you do some disinformation.

Think of it as con artistry in the name of self-defense. Like any good con, it consists of three parts: hook, line, and sinker.

The Hook

Your "hook" is a piece of information you create on purpose for a hunter to find. It looks real and will excite a skip tracer when he finds it. Perhaps you'll express interest in a home loan or an apartment rental or a credit card, causing someone to run an inquiry on your credit report. Perhaps you'll make calls from a phone line you know your pursuer will access.

Hooks are a great tool for victims of stalking and abuse. I once worked with a client named Vera, whose husband, the father of her child, had beaten and threatened to kill her. He was graduating from a three-year stint in the gray bar motel, and even from prison he had attempted to terrorize her by sending anonymous, threatening letters. When his release date was nearing, he made it obvious that he was planning to come back and hurt her.

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