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Companies that help people vanish
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoThis sounds something straight out of a Murakami novel!
- xenospn 6y agoWow. Just like Breaking Bad. I wonder if something like this is possible in the US?
- beardog 6y agoIndeed it is. https://inteltechniques.com https://inteltechniques.com has a podcast on OSINT/privacy run by a guy who performs this service to make people disappear as best as possible (within realm of the law). His clients are mainly celebs, execs and domestic abuse victims. It is very difficult and expensive, as for full protection you need to register LLCs and legal trusts for many things like home ownership. Additionally because we live in a surveillance capitalism dystopia, one little mistake can ruin everything and cause you to start over.
- krackers 6y agoWould the techniques be similar to those used in witness protection programs?
- phobosanomaly 6y agoI looked around and was only able to find that Witness Protection offers a name change, with a lot of the service being relocation under that new name. I'd be curious to see if they go beyond a simple name change and issue, for example, a new SSN and birth certificate.
- bonzini 6y agoConsidering the security nonsense that SSNs are (essentially using a username as a password) they really should be replacing at least that one.
- octoberfranklin 6y agoYes, they do issue you a new SSN. In fact federal witness protection is just about the only entity that can change someone's SSN outside of the other two exceptions: (a) it contained the digits "666" or (b) it was issued consecutively with that of a relative. Both (a) and (b) are vanishingly rare nowadays.
- helsinkiandrew 6y agoUnless you're going to live as a near hermit or change country I wonder how effective all of this is in the long run without plastic surgery. If you wander in front of someone taking a photo that ends up on facebook, or socialise with people who post things on social media or someone from your home town sees you and mentions it to someone else. I think I'd always be looking over my shoulder
- yourapostasy 6y agoYou are correct. Unless you pay for everything in cash or through a company front, it is extremely difficult to stay off the identity grid. Changing countries raises the bar, changing to a non-OECD nation raises it further, but you give up certain benefits of access to an advanced tech tree in exchange. In the US I helped a female relative obscure her trail somewhat from a stalker when she sold her residence and moved states. She could not get classified under the domestic violence identity protection program of her state until she suffered physical abuse of some kind recorded by the police. There was "only" police report of the stalker arriving outside her front door in a doorman-guarded complex, with security footage of him banging on her door for ~10 hours. Twice (after that, the complex security knew him by sight and threw him out the next three times before he gave up). So be aware that most of these types of programs across the US are reactive and not proactive. With enough money and patience, a lot of everyday people can be eventually found unless they submerge themselves into a highly-insular community. However, above a certain threshhold of money and effort, I believe the advantage accrues to the hider instead of the seeker, even with nation-state resources at the seeker's fingertips. I believe it is far more time-efficient for the seeker to burrow their way into the hider's network of contacts.
- jacquesm 6y ago"If it's good enough for you, it's good enough for me".
- moksly 6y agoI live in Denmark, where you’d really need a new official SSN to “disappear” because you can’t do much without one and the official 2 factor identity that comes with it. But this article got me wondering a bit. I work in the public sector, and it’s actually not that hard to declare someone dead and issue a new SSN, or perhaps even a fake permanent refugee permit that will be eligible for a SSN after a few years. The processes around it aren’t really that audited, and nothing about the last part of it would pop up in any audit. It’s also done by some of our lowest payed employees who are hopelessly overworked, making it even easier to hide. I wonder if anyone is selling this service illegally.
- viraptor 6y agoIt depends on who do you want to disappear from though. Just server the existing social ties or become officially recognised as a new identity. The first one probably doesn't require a new SSN.
- uniqueid 6y agoI wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a thriving industry in the future. The internet has created a world in which, no matter where you go, there is never an escape from your past, no easy way to pack your bags and start fresh. On top of that, the internet opens users from any particular nation to identity theft by criminals all around the world. This state of affairs is still young. A few more decades, and many more people will be seeking out a change of identity, a new address, maybe even plastic surgery. Witness relocation: it's not just for witnesses, anymore.
- shadowprofile77 6y agoI wonder how all of these things could be achieved despite the increasingly widespread use of biometric tracking technology being connected to our faces or other aspects of our physiology. I can see hacking and selective digital profile construction being done to remove traces of one's previous digital presence then replace it with another, and I can see people cleverly forging highly sophisticated fake official identity documents to back up their new names. All of that sure, but if one's ID is both governmentally and by corporations being increasingly connected to the structure of their face, or their gait, or their eyes or some other feature that a public camera could conceivably read, then how will the near future even allow anyone to make any of these identity jumps (legal or illegal)?
- searchableguy 6y agoI am hoping for brain transplant to become successful. You could switch with someone else and live as a brand new person. We are also printing organs and skin using 3D printers right now. I don't see why we won't be able to change people drastically by reprinting their unique biometrics and replace through surgery. If you don't have your old hand, then your fingerprints becomes useless. You can already order kits to fake biometrics authentication/creation. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/15/fake-fingerprints-can-imitate-real-fingerprints-in-biometric-systems-research https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/15/fake-fing... but this is worrying: https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/29/researchers-fool-person-detecting-ai-with-an-adversarial-t-shirt/ https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/29/researchers-fool-person-d... Just search adversarial [item] on Google.
- Hamuko 6y ago>Just like Breaking Bad. Not really considering Breaking Bad was about disappearing from the law.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoBut also from gangs, which in that series are the more dangerous.
- inopinatus 6y agoNot sure why you’re being downvoted. It is far from unreasonable to learn more about a society from the thoughtful dramas that it exports. For example, I have gained an unexpected insight into Korean constitutional jurisprudence from watching Secret Forest.
- cafard 6y agoIt has to be a lot harder than it was, but it has been done.
- duxup 6y agoThe article isn't really clear on the mechanics of this. Are they changing their names and starting over entirely? Or are they just moving and the company helps them establish themselves in a way where their name isn't likely to appear as easily and Japan has some mix of legal / personal norms that allow this to happen / them to remain hidden?
- toast0 6y agoIt sounds like it's mostly legal / personal norms that make it hard to investigate. They mentioned continuing to use ATMs etc and that police won't do anything. In the US, I imagine you'd file a missing persons report, and track down people still using their banking connections. If you wanted to disappear in the US and not be tracked, you'd need to keep a lot of cash, and not use a car (or not register it).
- vmception 6y agoyou can register the car under an LLC or buy someone else's car registered under an LLC and you purchased their LLC, the state isn't aware that the car changed titles
- scoopertrooper 6y agoPresumably, you'd need to register as a director of the LLC.
- Uberphallus 6y agoSounds like a company that makes people disappear would have an LLC for such purposes and charge accordingly.
- vmception 6y agoIts state dependent of where the LLC is registered, as not all states have those requirements Its state dependent on whether the state you are physically in has the resources to enforce foreign LLC registration (hint: none do, with California being a big maybe) Its state dependent on whether enforcement has any real consequences, such as whether there is any retroactive punishment or not (example: New York State actually gives retroactive protections for your foreign LLC even after you are sued in court and form a domestic LLC as required to have a better case, so the only consequence there is having to register once you get sued which costs a little money, no consequence for the property and this doesn't address a bill of sale for a car) So, what happens when you get pulled over? Shrug, have all the papers? Point is that you can transfer any property this way by transferring the business that owns it with nobody knowing what the business actually owns.
- pixxel 6y ago> [in Japan] Privacy is fiercely protected: missing people can freely withdraw money from ATMs without being flagged, and their family members can’t access security videos that might have captured their loved one on the run. In general, does this fiercely protected privacy culture extend to online? No surveillance capitalism in Japan?
- GuB-42 6y agoIt doesn't look like there is anything preventing data collection here. Banks will obviously know you are withdrawing money, and Google will know if you are logged into your account. The big thing is that the legal system won't help you if you want to track someone. You can't file a missing person report and expect police to investigate and private companies to hand you data.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoIs there a country where this is NOT true? If you file a lawsuit against someone in Japan, is it really true that they can't be served or subpoenaed?
- laurieg 6y agoIn some ways it does: People are a lot more conscious of putting pictures of people's faces online. Many people avoid putting any pictures of faces on social media accounts. People censor other's faces in pictures, or even their own children's. While your average person might be more privacy conscious in this way, there seems to be a general feeling of "trust large institutions". They seem to collect as much information as anywhere else.
- dvduval 6y agoI love to get a quote on the cost of disappearing. Maybe I'm not ready yet but it would be nice to hear my options so that I would have a clear plan should that option ever become necessary. Haha
- fho 6y agoDon't do it ... there is another article floating around the internets about a guy who specializes in finding people who disappear. And apparently his successrate is well above 80% (from memory). Most people are just not that great at leaving their live behind and will leave traces by calling family or accessing old online accounts.
- luckylion 6y agoWould you happen to have a link? Google has become terrible useless for me for finding specific things based on few keywords.
- aclimatt 6y agoI'm trying to find the link but I remember reading an article on HN about how nigh impossible it is to fake your own death. Not sure if that was what the parent was talking about. Here's one I found: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/inside-the-world-of-investigators-who-know-youve-faked-your-death https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/inside-the-world-of-inve... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20862618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20862618
- epse 6y agoThe page is currently unavailable. Would anyone know of a mirror?
- agumonkey 6y agotwo; - https://archive.is/EOdnb https://archive.is/EOdnb - https://web.archive.org/web/20200907025727/https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200903-the-companies-that-help-people-vanish https://web.archive.org/web/20200907025727/https://www.bbc.c...
- justinclift 6y agohttps://archive.vn/EOdnb https://archive.vn/EOdnb Weirdly, the title (in the page header) of the mirror page is wrong. Seems to be for another article. The actual mirrored content seems correct though.
- ponker 6y agoIs it just me, or does Japan have more of these subcultures like “jouhatsu” and “hikikomori” simply because they give the behavior a name? There are people who do this everywhere but it seems like it’s exoticized when Japanese. Or are these extreme behaviors actually more common in Japan?
- luckylion 6y agoI don't know, but I believe that an industry forming around something is an indicator that it's somewhat common. But then again, maybe companies offering these services exist everywhere and I'm just not aware of them.
- ponker 6y agoWell an industry can form only when there’s a name, otherwise people can’t identify themselves as the target market or seek out the vendors.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoI'm sure it's (as you say) exoticized or named because it's Japan. I mean over here we have similar things; we have shut-ins but we call them neckbeards, hoarders, recluses or just "people in their parents basement"; we have people that vanish but we've memed them with the "still waiting for dad to return from the gas station for cigarettes 15 years ago", we have "friends for hire" but they're called prostitutes or e-girls, and we have suicide but it's people jumping off bridges instead of hanging themselves in a bamboo forest. A lot of Japanese things are romanticized by using their Japanese monikers but when you zoom out, it's the same problems, different setting.
- viraptor 6y agoThere's definitely a bit of nihonjin-ron / idea of Japanese uniqueness. But some ideas can't be generalised that easily. For example prostitutes exist, but these are different than friend / family rentals or maid cafes. (Even if the concept on some level has the same roots) They seem to come from different needs. But I'd totally read a deep dive into similarities/differences between western shut-ins and hokikomori. I don't understand differences here either.
- helsinkiandrew 6y agoBBC have been running some very bleak articles about japan recently. This was from a few weeks ago (private agents that will seduce your wife/husband so you can divorce them) https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200731-the-saboteurs-you-can-hire-to-end-your-relationship https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200731-the-saboteurs-...
- notimetorelax 6y agoIt’s kind of telling that such services exist. Seems to me, if people are placed into the impossible situations they’ll find a way out.
- smabie 6y agoWhen something doesn't make any sense, it's usually because of the government. This would fall into that category.
- kwhitefoot 6y agoGovernment is often a reflection of society.
- tychostation 6y agoWell there looks to be a succession race for Abe’s place and us election. I would think this would be mostly political. To be honest this kind of privacy allowed by law enforcement would definitely not fly in the US. It also highlights how little privacy there is in the US. The seduce your wife/husband thing probably happens everywhere
- hajiquickvanish 6y agoCall Ed at Best Quality Vacuum. (505) 842-4205. 5 stars, would use again.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoAsk for a dust filter for a Hoover Max Extract® Pressure Pro™ Model 60.
- ragebol 6y agoFirst thing I did on this comments page was 'ctrl-F Hoover". Was not disappointed.
- DonHopkins 6y agoI had one of those, but it cost millions of dollars to replace the dust filters. It's almost as bad a scam as Epson ink.
- dang 6y agoWow - this is the equivalent of Poe's Law for spam. Glad I googled it just to be sure.
- 082349872349872 6y agoTrue. I had been thinking it might be a J. Edgar Hoover reference, but TIL. Before the late twentieth century, allusions were often a form of gatekeeping. Now they're a kind invitation to join today's lucky 10'000. 开卷有益. https://imgflip.com/i/4e6z2q https://imgflip.com/i/4e6z2q
- shadowprofile77 6y agoI wonder how techniques like these will far in our increasingly present (but still not universal) world of tying one's identity to their biometric details, especially their face in not just formal ID documents but also corporate digital visual registries (Facebook being just one example)
- thret 6y agoI feel like this should be more common. People kill themselves to escape their lives, but they should vanish and start again instead.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoHow do you know how uncommon it is? Anyway, suicide mostly comes from desperate mental situations, not people making business plans.
- koheripbal 6y agoThe problem with that is that you still bring yourself with you. ...all the guilt, the addiction, the wasted years, the mental illness, the anger issues. Most people would end up back where they started. ...maybe if there was a way to reset your brain in the process.
- drdeadringer 6y ago"No matter where you go, there you are." The intent of telling me this when I was impressionable was the opposite of what I received. I understand that "you bring your problems with you", but at the time I received "don't bother travelling because it's the same shit in a different place". So I've not been the globe-trotter my sibling has been. Night and Day. The only regret here is that the original intent got flipped from the giving to the receiving. Be careful.
- namizaru 6y agoThere are many valid reasons for yonige(night run away) or johatsu(literally evaporation) in Japan, but there are pernicious side effects. Loans and leases in Japan most often require a guarantor. If the primary loan holder disappears, the guarantor is stuck having to repay the loan or pay out the remainder of the lease agreement. I personally know a family devastated when they found themselves on the hook paying out a loan for a close friend they had known from childhood while trying to build their own business.
- oshea64bit 6y agoI've heard of a similar situation as well. It's a common saying here to never become somebody's hoshonin (guarantor), no matter who it is you're helping out.
- HenryBemis 6y agoIt's common saying everywhere. If the person needs a guarantor, it means that they cannot afford the loan. Even if they have the best of intentions, life may happen (people die before their time for many reasons), they can get caught up with the wrong crowd and fall out of (financial) grace, a bad partner can get them to "drop this life and move away" (ignoring obligations), and you can end with a damaging debt.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoIn Japan you need guarantors even for mundane things like renting an apartment. This is particularly difficult for immigrants if they don't know anybody and their employer won't sponsor them.
- kwhitefoot 6y agoReminds me of Reggie Perrin. See The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/fallandriseofreginaldperrin/index.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/fallandriseofreginaldperrin/inde...
- inopinatus 6y agoEnsure the surface is clean and dry; sand it smooth with 100 grain paper, or 300 if stained. Apply the first two thin coats using a natural brush (or synthetic for water based varnishes), following the grain of the wood. “Tip off” to improve and even the finish whilst the surface is still wet. Leave for a day, then sand lightly and evenly with 350 grain paper before applying an additional coat. Allow several weeks for full curing before use. For best results, work in a dust, fibre, and debris-free low humidity space with fume extraction as ventilation rather than open windows.
- lgregg 6y agoI know the French Foreign Legion used to/may still give out passports and many regular army and SS troops from Nazi Germany took this up as a way to restart their lives. For all intents and purposes, this could work too.