"Since Google, Yahoo, and Bing already retain users' search data, this proposal is clearly aimed at Ixquick and our English-language subsidiary Startpage (www.startpage.com)," said Robert Beens, CEO of Ixquick.

Submitted Link #1: https://startpage.com/eng/press/pr-startpage-fight...

I have been selling stuff on ebay and amazon for a number of years and I picked this little trick up from another seller.

If you are mailing a package like a book or CD, all I put is my return address without any name. I have mailed from a number of different post offices, and nobody has ever given me a problem over it.

It has been discussed here to put the return address on the back of the envelope because the post office photographs the front, but on a package they might object-I'm not sure because I have not tried it yet. Thanks.

In PA, when you move you receive a little paper card to be kept with your drivers license. Your actual drivers license is NOT updated. I've moved twice since I got my license - and I opened a PO box with this "old" license ("forgetting" to give them the little paper card) and my college ID card which has nothing but my picture and my name. No other information. My middle name is Tyler, and I've been receiving mail as "Joshua Tyler" or even "J. Tyler" for over six months now with no problems.

My bank account is in the town my grandparents live in Delaware, in a bank with no branches in PA. I visit them frequently, and all other times I just use the online banking, and receive no printed statements. I have no credit cards, except for a debit card linked to my account. I've learned from experience that I do a poor job of hanging on to money, so I don't even give myself the temptation to go beyond my means.

If the dog doo-doo really hits the fan, my college has lockers in the hallways (the wide, gym locker variety). These lockers are NOT registered to anyone - anyone can stick a combination lock on one and it's immediately theirs. In one locker I have a clean Acer netbook, some cash, and a duffel bag with a change of clothes. I don't do ANYTHING illegal, but if anything were to ever happen to me or someone I love, the college is directly across the street from the Greyhound terminal. And since many people take summer classes here, the college NEVER empties the lockers...

I still have a long way to go - my privacy on the Internet is not where it should be. I'm trying to find a ghost address, but I'm 20 and look 16, so I haven't found a way to get people to take me seriously. But this has turned into a game for me. Not a "stick it to the man" type of game, but a game that's actually turned out to be fun. Again, everybody: I'm two years out of high school. I'm a full time community college student with very, very little income. And I've taken the first steps to privacy, and I already feel more confident in myself. You can too. If anyone's reading this unsure about how or whether to proceed, follow Jack's advice - just set a day, and DO IT, no matter what. You'll be glad you did.

... Way to go, Josh!

Let's not discuss the legal definition of domicile; I'm assuming the Colorado does not have a similar tax and so you can live there indefinitely with MT plates.

If not, explain how you are able to avoid that because maybe that would work here, too.

Thanks, notifiying your credit card company before you travel is always a good idea. I always do that since I had a card denied many years ago.

My post was in reference to post #7800 where JJ suggests getting a Canadian credit card. I was relating my experience in trying to get one and I wondered if anyone was able to get one and how they did get it.

No, you won't lose your home. Who would try to take it from you if it's paid for?

But, if your LLC ceases to exist because you didn't keep it up (by not paying the Registered Agent fees or filing the necessary reports) then the TITLE to the house becomes clouded, as it's then difficult to determine to whom the house rightfully belongs in some legal action, like at your death. This is one of the difficulties in using LLC's for privacy, it does add a layer of complexity and ongoing bureaucratic involvement.

This only becomes an issue if something happens where the title to the house is placed in question. Such events could include your death or incapacity, a bankruptcy, a lien or assessment by a government agency or homeowner's association, a tax lien from the federal or state government or some other legal action where title to the house is involved, including things like title insurance or homeowners insurance claims.

Thus, it's important to keep the LLC legally formed and up to date. If this is a concern, and it is, you should get advice from a qualified lawyer as to how to set things up properly. For example, you may want to have your LAWYER do the closing in the name of the LLC, paying by check from an escrow account to cut your name out of it, so you don't end up with gift or estate tax issues down the road. If you put YOUR signature on the closing documents, even as an agent for an LLC, then you are forever linked with the property, and that can have tax implications in the future.

JJ replies:"... In some states you can transfer into an LLC with no tax, just a transfer fee. It is more secure, however, to do an outright sale and pay the tax."

In Colorado you can transfer ownership of vehicles to an owned LLC without paying sales tax, but in order to do so you must fill out what's called an "Affidavit of One and the Same," which is a sworn affidavit stating that you (the previous owner) and the LLC are "one and the same." Only by doing so can you avoid paying sales tax because it's considered a paper transfer of title, not a sale.

However, in doing so, you are irrevocably linking your LLC to your name in the state records system. That affidavit will be filed away, and the fact that you are the LLC will become part of the DMV record for the vehicle, precisely so that you cannot evade taxes. Legally, whatever applies to the LLC applies to you as "one and the same."

To what extent this "one and the same" information is available to the public, or PIs, is unknown to me, but it's my assessment that if the government knows it, others can find it out, so it's worth spending some extra cash to make the privacy airtight.

The only way to de-link your vehicle from your name is to actually "sell" the vehicle to the LLC that does NOT link to your name, pay the sales tax, and USE A NOMINEE to perform the transaction! This is because the current owner attempting to sell a vehicle to a new owner who isn't doing the paperwork may raise suspicion in the DMV. Usually, the new owner or his agent does the paperwork in a legitimate transaction. Therefore, you need to make the transaction appear legitimate and unsuspicious. (Don't forget that if you "sell" your car to an LLC, you must declare the "proceeds" as income on your personal income taxes. To be airtight, suck it up and pay the income tax too, that way there's no way to "get" you for a fraudulent transaction!)

The procedure I follow is to get a friend to agree to be appointed "Manager of Transportation Services" for the LLC, and then I, in my pseudonymous identity as the President of the LLC, issue a letter authorizing my friend to perform registration and licensing transactions regarding motor vehicles for the LLC. This document is provided just in case the DMV wants proof my friend is authorized, although that's not usually an issue, because the DMV requires that the person performing the transaction provide positive identification (DL/passport), which is noted in the record.

As my real self and title holder, I sell the vehicle to the LLC. It's necessary to actually claim a reasonable price, as most states will not allow a "one dollar" sale for new vehicles because they lose out on sales tax that way, so they keep lists of average retail prices for vehicles and will "impute" a value to the vehicle if you attempt to evade sales tax too egregiously. Fortunately, most of my vehicles are at least 10 years old, and can be sold at nominal value. I usually have my agent tell them that it's a ten-year-old junker bought for a hundred dollars, which works with older vehicles. For my new Ford pickup, I'd have to claim a fair-market price and pay the sales tax to make it legit.

Once the title work is done, a "letter of concluded participation" is provided to the LLC by my nominee friend to legally prove that she/he is no longer an agent for the LLC, and the vehicle is now properly and legally titled in the name of an anonymous New Mexico LLC.

One way I found to get around the sales tax issue for expensive new vehicles is to form an LLC in Montana and transfer ownership to the Montana LLC. Montana has very favorable motor vehicle registration laws, and there are several companies that specialize in forming Montana LLCs and doing the title transfer work for you. There is no sales tax on the transfers, and there are no yearly registration fees or taxes on any vehicle more than 11 years old, which means that all but two of my vehicles and trailers get a permanent, non-expiring Montana plate that I only have to pay for once.

It costs about $1200 to form a Montana LLC and register 2 vehicles, and you have to pay about $100 per year for a registered agent, just like in New Mexico, but once done, even for new vehicles, taxes and registration fees can be very attractive.

Colorado is really, really pissed about this because people go buy their half-million dollar RV's in Montana under a Montana LLC and then don't have to pay the outrageous Colorado registration and ownership taxes, but legally they have a very hard time doing anything about it because Montana refuses to cooperate, and so long as you have a legitimate "business presence" in Montana, there's nothing Colorado can do about it, under the "Full Faith and Credit" provisions of the Constitution.

There is a major trucking company operating out of Denver that has been registering all it's tractors and trailers in Montana for more than 15 years, and still is, despite being outed by a Denver TV station. They say, correctly, that they have a right to register their interstate commercial vehicles in any state where they do business, and that registration is valid in all states, so they told the state of Colorado to pound sand when it complained. This is why many corporations are registered in Delaware, which has very favorable tax and regulation climate for corporations, and all other states are required to honor that Delaware incorporation, even though the "business presence" in Delaware is nothing more than a mail drop and a registered agent's office. Delaware gets to impose small corporate taxes, which given the number of corporations registered there adds up to a huge amount of money, but a significant savings for each corporation, so Delaware is happy to set things up that way. So is Montana, when it comes to licensing vehicles. They get small taxes and fees on new vehicles, and economic benefits even from older ones, so they are happy to give people a place to get respite from burdensome vehicle taxes and fees and to hell with what the other states think about it.

For the trucking company, their "place of business" in Montana consists of a desk and a telephone in a cubical in the truck dealership they buy their trucks from in Helena.

My Montana LLC is my internet-based news company, and my "business presence" in Montana is my Montana-based ISP who hosts my website. I access my "office" via the Internet, from Colorado. I can get mail forwarding services from the company that acts as my registered agent in Montana as well, and they already forward official correspondence as part of the RA package. I don't provide any mailing address for the company, and do all my business on-line, so that's not a problem, but I could just use my Colorado ghost address if necessary. I also pay any necessary Montana taxes on the LLC income (there isn't any, of course... News writing income flows through my Colorado LLC of the same name, not the Montana LLC)

This makes it a perfectly legitimate and legal Montana business (just because I'm "on the road" all the time and I never go in to the "office" in Montana doesn't mean it's a fraudulent business...), which makes the ownership of the vehicles and registration in Montana perfectly legal too, and Colorado can't do a thing about it, as much as they'd like to.

This was all accomplished by email with the company in Montana, all under my pseudonym, and the Montana LLC is owned by my anonymous New Mexico LLC, so my real name isn't even known to my registered agent in Montana, or to my RA in New Mexico. They have my pseudonym, a ghost address P.O. Box in an adjacent community in Colorado, and an e-mail address through my Montana ISP with which to contact me.

And this means that if something happens to me, my heirs get a packet in the mail with the ownership papers for the New Mexico LLC from my lawyer, and they become the owners of my Montana LLC, my vehicles, and everything else I choose to transfer into either LLC as an asset without having to retitle them and without them being detectable as part of my estate, and thus it's all immune from estate tax, which comes back at 51 percent next year.

Plus, it's literally impossible for anyone to track the ownership of the vehicles to me, personally. At worst, the state might find out that I, under my real name, am using the vehicles with the permission of the company that owns them, which is authorized by a letter from the President (me, using my pseudonym) of the company, a copy of which I keep in each vehicle along with the registration papers. This is a factual, but not a legal link to me, and one that's unlikely to result in a privacy breach.

I went out of the country some time back. I used a Visa debit/credit card. I just called the credit union to advise them when I would be going, and from which countries charges might appear. I also took a passel of traveler's checks. Those I used (and were accepted) as cash for nearly everything. The card was only for advance reservations at hotels and such.

I wonder if one of those pre-paid Visa cards with out-of-country processing might also be an option.