I have been helping people disappear and create extreme privacy for more than twenty-five years.
I wrote the New York Times bestselling How to Disappear, along with the modern How to Disappear: AI War Edition – I Am Not Your Data, Digital Starvation and the Art of Becoming Extinct, and the practical How to Disappear: A Pocket Guide to Thinking, Planning, and Staying Gone.
I know the do’s and don’ts of vanishing, and the idea that you can completely erase your digital footprint is unrealistic.
Getting into an elevator creates a record. Walking into a bodega creates a record. Paying with cash can create a record. We live in a world of tracks and traces.
The bigger problem is not technology.
The bigger problem is you.
In my opinion, people and their habits are the greatest threat to their own privacy.
We have become conditioned to scroll, check email, use Apple Pay, share our locations, and rely on apps that remind us to buy milk. Every convenience creates another piece of data.
Then there is AI.
AI does not just watch what you do. It learns how you type, swipe, search, travel, communicate, and behave. Your habits become your fingerprint.
If you want to disappear today, stop thinking about deleting your digital footprint and start thinking about extreme privacy.
Think about how not to be located.
Think about how much information you willingly give away.
Think about the habits that make you predictable.
The tactics of extreme privacy do not begin with technology.
They begin with you.
Your routines.
Your behaviors.
Your digital weaknesses.
Your flaws.
That is where privacy is lost.
And that is where it must be reclaimed.