Safeguarding Your Privacy

Perhaps you are one of the many people plagued by debt collectors who won't let go. Maybe your ex is a maniac or you have obsessive fans or frenemies. A whole industry has sprung up to build a wall between you and pests.

With the growing rise of search engine technology, post office boxes become more useful than ever. Why publicize your home address to the growing club of weirdos when you can obtain a post office box for less than $100.00 a year? Post office boxes can be paid for six months at a time after your first year, and they can be a real life-saver if you like to E-bay or write controversial opinion pieces. Keep stalkers, "fans", disgruntled buyers and assorted loons at bay.

Small businesses purchase prestige cheaply through services like mailboxes etc. These companies give you the shipping clerk you never had or even better, access to a prestigious address without the high rents. For many years an independent publicist of my acquaintance used a Fifth Avenue address for all of her business mail while actually working out of a comfortable Forest Hills apartment with help from a couple of part timers attending a nearby college.

Disposable phone numbers. Tired of an endless array of manic bill collectors who insist that the Pakistani terrorists who bilked them out of millions are actually in hiding under your couch along with the dust bunnies? Why waste your time when you can waste theirs? Dump your telephone number with its oh so reachable convenience for kooks, cranks and assorted malcontents. Welcome to the world of tossable digits et. al. For a convenient fee you can create multiple numbers that ring at your office, cell, or home. The numbers can be screened, the hours at which your phone will ring can be controlled and you can live your life in piece. If the number starts becoming annoying, get a new one.

Plagued by would-be Lotharios who won't take no for an answer? In the city that never sleeps, you can blow off anyone you would prefer not to sleep with. Meet the official New York rejection line. That's right, the number one number for cowards everywhere.

Are you sick of data-gathering websites that demand you register before your single, one-time use? Baffle them with bugmenot.com. Users share their passwords here to help foil the ubiquitous cookie monsters.

Are you aware that marketers can now tailor advertisements and offers to you based on your internet connection's IP address combined with census information? That's right children, if you come from a downscale census tract, Big Brother knows and he won't waste his best deals on street urchins like you. Proxy servers to the rescue. The big-daddy of them all is anonymizer.com. For just a few shekels you can keep your downscale dive a mystery.

There you have it. Why move into a Carmelite nunnery when for a few bucks you can live the cloistered life? Yes, yes, I know you look good in black.

Sources:
http://www.mbe.com/ps/pages/index.aspx
http://www.tossabledigits.com/features.php
http://www.rejectionline.com/
http://www.bugmenot.com/
http://anonymizer.com/index_c.html