Disappear privacy expert Frank M. Ahearn creates extreme privacy for high-net-worth individuals, executives, families, public figures, and people who need to become difficult to locate.
I do not sell a standard privacy package.
I study how a person can be found, how their information connects, who can reach them, and what parts of their life create exposure. Then I design extreme privacy around the individual.
I Began by Finding People
My privacy expertise did not begin with cybersecurity software.
I began as a skip tracer.
In 1984, I opened The National Information Broker on West 25th Street in New York City. My work involved finding people, locating assets, uncovering addresses, connecting identities, and using social engineering to obtain information.
I learned how small details lead to larger discoveries.
A telephone number could reveal an address.
An address could reveal relatives.
A business could reveal an owner.
A relative could reveal a new location.
A casual conversation could provide the missing piece that connected everything.
To understand how to disappear, I first had to understand how people are found.
Eventually, I reversed the work. Instead of locating people who did not want to be found, I began helping people disappear, separate their identities, reduce their visibility, and create privacy.
Learn more about how people are located after they disappear.
Extreme Privacy for High-Net-Worth Individuals
High-net-worth individuals have a particular privacy problem.
Wealth creates information.
Real estate, businesses, corporate filings, professional biographies, charitable activity, photographs, social media, family connections, employees, legal disputes, and public records can reveal pieces of a private life.
The wealthy often have excellent physical security, attorneys, financial advisers, and cybersecurity protection. However, those protections do not necessarily prevent someone from discovering a home address, identifying family members, mapping personal relationships, or connecting a public identity to a private location.
Extreme privacy examines the entire life.
Who knows the address?
Whose name appears on an account?
Which relatives reveal information?
What does the professional identity expose?
Can a business connection lead to a residence?
Does social media reveal a routine?
Can staff, friends, contractors, or family members accidentally disclose what needs to remain private?
Read more about extreme privacy for high-net-worth individuals.
I Create Privacy Around the Person
Privacy cannot be created from a checklist.
One client may need to keep a new home private.
Another may need separation between a public professional identity and a private family life.
Someone relocating internationally may need to prevent an old location from leading directly to the new one.
A public figure may need to remain visible professionally while becoming unreachable personally.
A wealthy family may need to protect children, homes, routines, and relationships without withdrawing from normal life.
I examine what needs to remain public, what should become private, and which connections create risk.
My work can include:
- Identifying how the client can be found
- Reducing unnecessary personal information
- Separating personal and professional identities
- Protecting home and family information
- Creating new communication boundaries
- Examining business and public-record connections
- Building identity buffers
- Creating disinformation when possible
- Making private information harder to verify
- Preparing for future privacy invasion
The objective is not to make the client stop living.
The objective is to give the client control over who can find, understand, and reach them.
My Disappear Privacy page explains the service itself: how I evaluate identity, visibility, personal connections, and the information that makes a client easy to locate.
Keeping Wealth Private
Financial success attracts attention.
Sometimes that attention comes from strangers. Sometimes it comes from people already close to the client. Wealth can create unwanted requests, manipulation, opportunistic relationships, targeting, stalking, blackmail, or attempts to gain access through family members.
Keeping wealth private is not simply about hiding a number.
It is about limiting the personal information that wealth exposes.
A person may want to protect a residence, conceal a routine, separate assets from a public identity, or prevent acquaintances from understanding the extent of their financial life.
Read Who Can Help Me Keep My Wealth Private? for a closer look at this problem.
How to Disappear Is a Choice
Not every privacy client needs to vanish.
Some people want to disappear from public view.
Some need to become difficult to locate.
Others want to create distance between different parts of their identity.
The important decision is choosing privacy before exposure forces the decision upon you.
My article How to Disappear: Choose Extreme Privacy explains why disappearing is becoming a personal choice for people preparing for the future of privacy invasion.
AI, databases, facial recognition, data brokers, public records, and behavioral tracking are making people easier to identify and understand. Waiting until someone is actively searching for you makes the work harder.
Extreme privacy should begin before the crisis.
Books by Frank M. Ahearn
I am the bestselling author of “How to Disappear,” which explains how information trails make people findable and how those trails can be changed.
My other privacy books include:
- “How to Disappear: A Pocket Guide to Thinking, Planning, and Staying Gone”
- “How to Disappear Journal: Seventy of the Most Important Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Disappear”
- “How to Disappear: AI War Edition – I Am Not Your Data”
- “I Was a Skip Tracer”
Explore my books about how to disappear and extreme privacy.
Hire a Disappear Privacy Expert
I work directly with clients around the world.
There is no staff, call center, or standard program. Every privacy strategy is created around the person, the risk, and the life they want to protect.
If you are a high-net-worth individual, executive, public figure, professional, or private person who needs extreme privacy, tell me what you want to change.
I will determine how you can be found, where your privacy is weak, and what must be done to make your life more difficult to reach.
Frank M. Ahearn creates extreme privacy for people who do not want the future deciding how visible they must be.
Read Why Frank M. Ahearn to understand how my career moved from finding difficult-to-locate people to disappearing clients, protecting identities, and handling extreme privacy and blackmail problems.