How to disappear

[noway2]

Link to an interesting article: http://besurvival.com/tips-and-tricks/how-to-disappear-and-live-under-the-radar

This one showed up in a Pintrest feed this morning. It discusses what it would take to adopt a new identity going under the radar. Some of it's obvious, such as change your appearance, getting rid of all your tracking devices, etc. Other aspects would be much harder on a personal scale and require some serious dedication to the goal, such as giving up a career and taking a job (or multiple) as a nighttime janitor and paying cash for everything.

 

[Chuckman]

There was that TV show a year or two ago, Hunted, showed how hard it is. Also recall reading an article a few years back...GQ, Vanity Fair, something like that...where the writer tried it for a few months, talked about how hard it was, how it took constant discipline, how many electronic tags we have, finding jobs where they don't do background checks or require SSN, etc.

 

[turkeydance]

well, in my opinion, you wouldn't "disappear", you would just change.
all your old info would remain, but you could disconnect from that.
the Alcatraz prison escapees apparently did.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alcatraz-inmates-survived-infamous-1962-escape-letter-suggests/

 

[JimP42]

Those escapees lived in a completely different world in 1962. Not a lot of cell phones or facial recognition then. Credit cards weren't even much of a thing then.

And don't you think the NSA probably has voice recognition data on just about every US resident and most of the ones who have talked to the US or across US owned comm fibers around the world? Voice isn't 100% positive ID, but it's pretty discriminating even if there are a few people that match any given sample. I would say that if you have talked on a phone with a number linked to you.