Duffbert's Random Musings

12/27/2010

Book Review - The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World by Chris Guillebeau

Category Book Review Chris Guillebeau The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules Live the Life You Want and Change the World

I've followed Chris Guillebeau's Art of Non-Conformity blog for awhile, and was excited to see that he had written a book that focused on his message of living life on your own terms. I picked up The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World and started it yesterday evening. I didn't put it down until I finished, and then ordered my own copy today to take over from the library copy I had. This is an excellent book, and has me re-examining why I do what I do (and why I don't pursue the things I really want to accomplish).

Contents:
Part 1 - The Remarkable Life: Sleepwalkers and the Living World; Setting the Terms of Your Unconventional Life; Smashing Through the Brick Wall of Fear; How to Fight Authority and Win
Part 2 - Reclaiming Work: Competence Is Your Security; Graduate School vs. the Blogosphere; The Power of Your Own Small Army; The Personal Finance Journey
Part 3 - The Power of Convergence: Radical Exclusion and the Quest for Abundance; Contrarian Adventures; Your Legacy Starts Now
Conclusion: Dangerous Ideas
Postscript - The Most Important Thing; Gratitude; Partnership with Charity - Water and Ethiopia; Frequently Asked Questions; Online Resources

Chris has never been one to do the conventional thing. He went to college after dropping out of high school as a sophomore. He enrolled in multiple colleges at one time to get his degree more quickly and save money. He started numerous businesses as he didn't want to work for someone else and be dependent on them for a paycheck. He volunteered on a medical ship for four years in West Africa. He has a goal to visit all 192 countries in the world (and he's within striking distance of it). Basically, he's accomplished more than any five "normal" people put together, and it's all because he refuses to let others dictate his lifestyle because "that's the way it's supposed to be done." Rather than say it's better to ask forgiveness than permission, he figures (and rightfully so, in my opinion) that most situations don't require *either*. You simply have to make up your mind to do something, and then act. Chris shares his philosophy and experiences in a conversational manner, and it reached past my normal cynical filters and made me consider what it is I do and why I do it.

I've got some dreams and goals I haven't been pursuing with any level of commitment or urgency. The Art of Non-Conformity made me realize that I'm so much further ahead in some areas than I give myself credit for, and there's no reason why I can't build on that and start to accomplish those things that I think about when I let my imagination go. Once my copy shows up from Amazon, I'll be re-reading certain chapters and focusing on making 2011 a far different year than 2010.

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Library
Payment: Borrowed

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 7:21 PM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/27/2010

Secunia Advisory SA42703 - IBM Lotus Mobile Connect Multiple Vulnerabilities

Category IBM/Lotus
Description
A weakness and two vulnerabilities have been reported in IBM Lotus Mobile Connect, which can be exploited by malicious people with physical access to bypass certain security restrictions and malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service)

1) The weakness is caused due to the Connection Manager not properly deleting the LTPA token for a session after the user logs off via the "Logoff" button, which can be exploited to bypass the authentication.

Successful exploitation requires that the attacker has e.g. access to an unattended client.

2) The Connection Manager does not properly handle failed connection attempts to the HTTP-TCP based Mobile Network Connections (MNC), which can be exploited to e.g. cause an out-of-memory condition, resulting in a crash.

3) An error exists within the reference counter of the Connection Manager when handling repeated logons with the same VPN ID, which can be exploited to desynchronise the reference counter of active sessions, leading to an exhaustion of e.g. all available dynamic IP addresses.

Solution
Contact the IBM Lotus Mobile Connect Support Center to receive temporary fixes. Reportedly, versions after 6.1.4 will contain the fixes.
Further details available in Customer Area

Provided and/or discovered by
Reported by the vendor.

Original Advisory
IBM (IZ74393, IZ74588, IZ75012):
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27020327

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 7:30 AM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/26/2010

An observation about the YellowSpat this week...

Category Everything Else
"Earning and maintaining the customer's trust has always been important in business. But social and mobile networks have changed the equation, tipping the balance of power considerably toward the customer. In our highly connected world, practically speaking, a brand is defined more by how people experience it, and what they say about it, than what the company says about itself."

-- The Mesh by Lisa Gansky

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 6:06 PM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (2)

12/26/2010

Book Review - Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr and Twitter Are Your Estate, What's Your Legacy? by Evan Carroll

Category Book Review Evan Carroll Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook Flickr and Twitter Are Your Estate What's Your Legacy?

So what happens to your digital self when you die? Your email, blog, Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook accounts? It's not something you hear talked about very much, but there could be personal and historical value lost if those accounts die along with you. Our parents and grandparents passed down photos and letters to us, but what if all of those photos and letters are now on Flickr and in email? Evan Carroll covers this topic in his book Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr and Twitter Are Your Estate, What's Your Legacy?, and it's a fascinating read.

Contents:
Introducing the Digital Afterlife
Your Digital Life Death, and Beyond: The Shift to Digital; A Well-Lived (Digital) Life; The Artifacts of Your Life; The Value of Digital Things; What You Leave Behind; The Opportunity of Digital Legacy; Your Legacy at Risk; The Birth of an Industry
Securing Your Digital Legacy: Before You Begin; Computers and Devices; Email; Social Websites; Finance and Commerce; Create Your Plan
Epilogue: The Future of Digital Death
Appendix; Glossary; From the Authors; Index

Carroll start off by covering the evolution from physical pieces of our story and heritage to a more digital form. Especially dramatic is the comparison of communication from people who are serving during a time of war. Letters from the front-line are saved, re-read, age, and are part of an overall memory. Now you get emails that only exist in electronic form, and are quickly read, replied to, and saved in a mailbox. The immediacy and format of the message makes it more transitory, and less likely it will be handed down to future generations. This aging and patina that forms over the years is completely missing from the digital form. And while letters and pictures can be destroyed by flood and fire, a simple hard drive crash can wipe out a significant part of our digital past.

From there, Carroll lays out a detailed plan and format to both back up your digital life and to make sure that someone has the digital keys to handle your estate after your death. It's not quite as simple as you'd think, as web sites will often automatically shut down accounts once they are presented with proof of your death. On top of that, today's cutting edge storage mediums (like DVDs or solid state hard drives) may deteriorate over time, or the hardware to read those devices may become obsolete. Zip drives, floppy disk drives, laser disk readers... even VCR players are becoming ever more difficult to find. Move forward another decade, and the problem just gets bigger.

Yes, thinking about your online self and death may not be the most enjoyable thing to think about. You may not even care or think it's important. But your family (and their families) may feel different, and would like to know what "grampa" was like when they were alive...

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Publisher
Payment: Borrowed

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 10:25 AM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (1)

12/25/2010

Book Review - Strobist Photo Trade Secrets Volume 1: Expert Lighting Techniques by Zeke Kamm

Category Book Review Zeke Kamm Strobist Photo Trade Secrets Volume 1: Expert Lighting Techniques

When I see cool pictures, I always wonder how they pulled that off. More often than not, it's a matter of lighting. Zeke Kamm presents a series of images along with the lighting configurations in his book Strobist Photo Trade Secrets Volume 1: Expert Lighting Techniques. This isn't a huge book with lots of detail. Instead, it's a series of images with the lighting set-up explained on the other side. You'll be able to read through the whole book in about 20 minutes, but it will give you hours of material for trying out some of your own ideas based on what you read.

This is best targeted at someone who's already comfortable around their camera, and who has a couple of detachable strobe flashes to play with. With those in hand, you can take a shot at most of the items pictured here. You could also take the idea and concept for a particular shot and try your own take on it. Fortunately, the setups don't require thousands of dollars of professional gear to pull off, so you can get started right away in making lighting a more integral part of your photographic compositions.

Since I want to start digging into photography in 2011, I'll keep this book around for reference. There's plenty of cool shots to aspire to here.

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Publisher
Payment: Free

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 11:48 AM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (6)

12/25/2010

Book Review - The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing by Lisa Gansky

Category Book Review Lisa Gansky The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing

After reading about this book from other influential bloggers, I decided to give it a go... The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing by Lisa Gansky. It's a fact that many of the innovative businesses these days are different that what our parents knew, but what makes them so, and what is this "mesh" that Gansky talks about?

Contents:
Getting to Know the Mesh; The Mesh Advantage; Mesh Design; In with the Mesh; In Mesh We Trust; The Mesh as Ecosystem; Open to the Mesh; Seed Your Own Mesh; The Mesh Directory; Acknowledgments; The Mesh References; Index

In normal businesses or transactions, you buy something and it becomes yours to do with what you want. If I buy a car, it's mine, along with all the costs and maintenance hassles. But the car sits idle 90% of the time. So instead of buying a car, what if you could belong to a group that owned the cars, and you just paid for your use of the vehicle? Enter ZipCar, a mesh service that takes a high-priced item and shares it amongst a number of people who only pay for what they need. These sharing services are becoming more and more common, and people are finding that letting go of ownership as it used to be known is actually very liberating, cost-effective, and ecologically friendly.

Gansky digs into the mindset of mesh businesses, how they operate, and how important transparency and information become in the relationship between business and customer. When executed well, customers start to feel like the business belongs to them (like Netflix, Zipcar, and Groupon). But because of this expectation of transparency, the business has to be very careful not to take that responsibility lightly. Since everyone in a mesh has access to everyone else, a mistake or arrogant attitude can destroy the business as quickly as it was built. It's a fine line the business has to walk, but the rewards can be enormous.

The Mesh is one of those books that anyone who is interested in online business formation and execution should read. It's also excellent for those who wonder what the next big online business will be, and if they could come up with an idea that would fly. Once you start looking at things through a mesh perspective, many of your everyday transactions start to take on a different look and feel, and you may see your opportunity hidden within the mundane parts of life.

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Library
Payment: Borrowed

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 9:16 AM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/24/2010

Book Review - The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Category Book Review Elizabeth Stuckey-French The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady

I recently received a copy of The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French from the Amazon Vine review program. Since it was described as something that fans of Carl Hiaasen would like (and I consider myself part of that group), I was looking forward to a slice of wackiness taking place in Florida. Well, the story *does* take place in Florida, but I certainly didn't find myself thinking "just one more chapter before I turn out the light." The story seemed more bizarre than funny, and I wasn't drawn to any of the characters. At the end, I could only muster a "meh."

The story revolves around Marylou Ahearn, an elderly lady who was unknowingly part of a government experiment involving the ingestion of a radioactive liquid while she was pregnant. Her daughter died of cancer while still a child, and Ahearn wants revenge on the doctor who ran the study. She finds him in Tallahassee, and moves down there to start plotting his demise. But he's become senile, is cared for by his family, and Ahearn has to figure out how to get close enough to him and his family to pull off her plan. As she injects herself into their lives, she finds that all of them have major issues and flaws, and it becomes her goal to expose and tear down the entire family bit by bit before knocking off the doctor. Unfortunately, she finds herself starting to care more about them than she though she would, and the messiness of their lives continue to build until *real* issues start to tear things apart.

Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of the characters, so you end up with shifting views throughout the book. I don't think that was all that bad. I believe my main problem is that I didn't end up liking or caring for any of the characters. The mother and father were both losers who were either willfully ignorant or who had checked out of family life. The doctor seemed far more astute than he let on, and you never knew if he understood what he did or if it was forgotten in the recesses of his mind. Two of the three kids were autistic, and they're not treated kindly by the author. The other daughter is portrayed as a responsible sibling who is starved for the attention that she doesn't get from her mother and father. The main character, Marylou Ahearn, is just cruel in some of her plottings. Granted, murder isn't exactly a wonderful thing to be planning, but things like getting the autistic daughter to pose naked for glamor pictures, knowing they'll probably get out to the public, is a bit much to do to a kid who just happens to be part of the doctor's family.

It's too bad I didn't like The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady more than I did. The basic premise sounded promising, but it lost a lot in the telling...

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Amazon Vine Review Program
Payment: Free

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 5:32 PM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (5)

12/24/2010

Book Review - The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card

Category Book Review Orson Scott Card The Lost Gate

As part of the Amazon Vine review program, I got a copy of Orson Scott Card's latest effort titled The Lost Gate. I was torn on selecting this one. On one hand, I really like Card's Ender series, and he is a great storyteller. On the other hand, I'm really not much into the fantasy genre. But it's good to keep an open mind, and in this case it worked out well. The Lost Gate is a fun read that does a fine job in taking mages and dropping into the modern day world that the rest of us inhabit.

Danny North is a young teenager being raised in a compound consisting of an extended family of mages who have slowly lost power over the years. Long ago, Loki locked all the gates between this world and their homeland of Westil, and the family's current state is but a mere shadow of their past power and glory without the gates to strengthen them. The only way this could be altered is by a gatemage, someone who can open gates in space to magically move from one location to another regardless of distance. But gatemages are killed off when found, as it's the only way to keep peace amongst all the families, making sure that each family remains as powerless as the others. Danny doesn't appear to have *any* mage powers at all, and the family thinks him useless. But he slowly figures out that he's able to make small leaps without knowing how or why, and then he has to make a decision... stay with the family and be killed, or escape the compound and live in the real world, knowing that all the families will still target him for elimination.

Danny leaves the compound, uses his gates to nick some real clothes from Walmart, and then hooks up with another teen who uses Danny's natural acting ability to beg money off of others. They end up in Washington DC where Danny finds others of his type who are also outcasts from their families. As his skills improve and his knowledge increases, he comes ever closer to the final showdown with the ultimate gatemage. Will he avoid the confrontation and just live life looking over his shoulder for his killers, or will he attempt to open up the gates and restore access to his homeland?

I think what made this an enjoyable read for me was the modern day setting of the story. I tend to get bored with the endless details of some made-up world, and Card avoids that by bringing everything forward into current time and surroundings. While I don't think it was meant to be, The Lost Gate has a "young adult" feel to it. Given the age of the main character and the types of situations, I kept thinking that it would appeal strongly to a youth market. But it's also a good read for adults. In addition, I can see this becoming the first of a series, much like Ender's game.

I don't think this will overtake Ender's Game as Card's best book, but it will definitely be up towards the top in my opinion...

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Amazon Vine Review Program
Payment: Free

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 2:09 PM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (1)

12/24/2010

So why the change as to how I post Notes/Domino job opportunites I find?

Category Notes Jobs
As many of you know, I've taken to tweeting Notes/Domino job opportunities I find as part of my Google News Alerts (as well as ones that people email me). I started doing this as I was getting emails from people asking if I would keep my ears open for opportunities, as they were either getting laid off, needed a new job, or their companies were moving to Exchange/SharePoint. Rather than try and keep track of who was looking for what and where, I started the tweeting under my ID and the LotusWatch twitter ID, with crossposts to Facebook.

I'll admit I've been surprised at the following that LotusWatch has developed, and I'm glad I can do something to help pay back the community for all it's given me over the years.

But there's always been a few small things that were a pain in tweeting those openings. Many were duplicates for the same job posted by different agencies, and I didn't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure out if that was the case and which agency listing I should tweet. I also would get emails from people asking me to let people know about a certain job, but a page long email doesn't really fit into a 140 character tweet if it's not already posted somewhere (which it normally wasn't). Finally, I tried to avoid posting items that were nothing but body shops, but again... hard to tell.

Starting yesterday, I decided to make it easier on myself. From now on, I'll copy/paste *all* the Notes/Domino job openings I find on my alerts into a single daily blog post... duplicates, body shops, emailed items, you name it. That way, you can look for things that might interest you without my filter coming into play. You might see the same job with three different agencies, but you might already have a working relationship with one of them... now you can just work through your agency of choice. If I get an email, you'll see the same information I got. You'll see how many Notes/Domino jobs are being advertised for offshoring. If I see it, you'll see it.

I'll tweet the daily job post to my main account, as well as the LotusWatch account with a cross-post to Facebook. You'll still get the same information as before (actually, even more!), but I won't clog up you twitter client and you can go back to a single point to look things over if a day or two has passed.

So here's to 2011, and I hope it finds you in the job of your choice.

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 8:31 AM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (3)

12/13/2010

If you're routing mail from Notes apps to Exchange, the [Sign] flag in @MailSend will not work...

Category IBM/Lotus Microsoft
As part of our migration efforts, we still have Notes applications generating emails that go to Exchange and Outlook. If the actual form is being sent, we found that forms that have checkboxes and radio buttons get lost somewhere in the ether and never arrive. To get those to go, I had to change those types of fields to dialog boxes.

But we had one other situation that cropped up, where a normal @MailSend that sent a doclink would never arrive. The form had checkboxes and radio buttons, but that shouldn't have been an issue since it was only a doclink being sent. Turns out that when this was coded, the developer used the [Sign] flag as part of the @MailSent parameters. On a hunch, I took all of those out and had the user retest. Now it works fine...

Still not sure why [Sign] would have held things up (nor did we ever get an answer as to why checkbox and radio button fields wouldn't send), but such is life...

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 9:06 AM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (2)

12/13/2010

IBM Lotus Notes Traveler Servlet Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability

Category IBM/Lotus
I saw that Vupen Security has issued an advisory for the following: IBM Lotus Notes Traveler Servlet Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability

Technical Description

A vulnerability has been identified in IBM Lotus Notes Traveler, which could be exploited by attackers to execute arbitrary scripting code. This issue is caused by an unknown input validation error within the Lotus Traveler servlet, which could be exploited by attackers to cause arbitrary scripting code to be executed by the user's browser in the security context of an affected site.

Affected Products

IBM Lotus Notes Traveler versions prior to 8.5.1 FP3 (8.5.1.3)

Solution

Upgrade to IBM Lotus Notes Traveler version 8.5.1 FP3 (8.5.1.3) or later.

References

http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2010/3193
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/Lotus_Notes_Traveler_851_FP3_Release_Notes

Credits

Vulnerability reported by the vendor.

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 4:47 AM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/09/2010

So is Lotus conceding the government cloud email market to Microsoft and Google?

Category IBM/Lotus
The news that the USDA is consolidating all their email systems onto Microsoft's hosted offerings hit the webs today. Mary Jo Foley had an interesting column titled Microsoft and the USDA: May the best incumbent win:

Microsoft execs have been crowing about the company’s big cloud win this week with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), via which the organization will be moving 120,000 users to the Microsoft’s hosted e-mail, collaboration and conferencing products.

It appears that a number of their various email systems were Microsoft to begin with, and they decided that there's some level of comfort in migration when the vendors are the same. But it also means whatever level of Notes mail used in the organization was lost, and that's where I really have to wonder about IBM's commitment to the government sector.

Here's what we hear from IBM concerning that particular loss:

An IBM spokesperson made it sound as if IBM decided against bidding on the deal, given the USDA’s requirement for Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) compliance. A spokesperson said that “IBM has chosen to not address FISMA compliance requirements and instead is focused on commercial requirements addressing cross-company collaboration with a focus on security and enterprise integration.”

Say wha...?

Google has achieved compliance, Microsoft is working on it, and IBM "has chosen not to address FISMA compliance requirements"?

The government released a 25 point Federal technology plan today, which has an interesting emphasis:

Shift to “Cloud First” policy. Each agency will identify three “must move” services within three months, and move one of those services to the cloud within 12 months and the remaining two within 18 months.

Email will likely be one of those "must move" services, and I'm going to guess that FISMA certification will figure in to more than a few of the RFPs. And IBM has chosen to "not address" certification and instead focus on something that has enough buzz words to say little and win big in buzzword bingo?

I'm going to hold out hope that the IBM spokesperson was talking only about the USDA contract and not the LotusLive strategy going forward. Because if that's the case, Lotus's strong presence in the government market is about to be slashed dramatically...

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 4:23 PM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (21)

12/08/2010

Why I don't think XPages will make a difference in turning the tide...

Category IBM/Lotus
Disclaimer up front... There are generalizations in here, because actual seat counts and win/loss claims are hard to decipher from press and vendor spin. Your mileage may (and probably will) vary from what I'm about to write...

I know that many have looked at XPages as being a key factor in turning the Domino platform into a first-class application server. And I agree... it is a positive move in the right direction in terms of what Domino can do now both on the web and on the client via XPages.

But overall, I have no confidence that it will make any difference in stemming the tide of what appears by all accounts to be a continual slide in lost Lotus accounts. The latest loss is the GSA decision, and nearly all the pundits and accounts make it sound like Google and Microsoft were the only two competitors for the business. The loss of the account by Lotus is portrayed as a done deal, a foregone conclusion. The analysis is how Microsoft is going to counter Google's move into government accounts, with little being said about how Lotus might factor into any decision.

Mail and application migrations are two entirely different things, but it's been my observation that the same path seems to occur when a Lotus account is lost. Mail migration takes place at some pace. In some areas it's fast with a total cutover, and in other locations it's a long, drawn-out affair. But simultaneously, the decision is made to scale back or freeze additional Notes development while migration plans are figured out. There are obvious horror stories on application migrations, and few seem to get totally off of all Notes applications very easily, but there seems to be one constant factor... no one is committing resources to enhance and expand their Notes portfolio if they've migrated to another email platform.

Email and applications are intricately linked when it comes to using Domino, and if you lose the email battle, you lose the applications battle.

I don't see that many (any?) people are buying Domino as strictly an application platform, nor is IBM pushing it as such. Because of this, it seems that any new technologies like XPages are at the mercy of whether an account chooses to stay with Notes email. If that's tossed, XPages won't save Domino in an organization looking to cut back on their IT spending.

I think XPages is an important skill to learn if you're in a Domino environment that is committed to that platform. But I see more and more organizations that are questioning that commitment, and are making the move to either premise or cloud email from Google or Microsoft. And when that happens, Domino apps are in a precarious (and often deadly) position, regardless of whether XPages exist or not.

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 5:25 PM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (94)

12/05/2010

Book Review - How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace by Frank M. Ahearn and Eileen C. Horan

Category Book Review Frank M. Ahearn Eileen C. Horan How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint Leave False Trails and Vanish without a Trace

While I have my doubts that one can disappear completely without "special assistance" (as in government help or an extreme amount of money), there *are* some ways to make it a lot more difficult to be found by non-government officials. Frank Ahearn and Eileen Horan cover a lot of that information in their book How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace. This is not a large encyclopedic manual on how to eliminate your existence; rather it's more a handbook on how to make it more difficult to be traced (and a lot more expensive for those determined to do so).

Contents:
I'm Frank. Nice To Meet You; Meet Your Enemy - The Skip Tracer; A Skip Tracer's Best Friends; Time To Disappear; Misinformation; Tracks And Clues In The Home; Disinformation; Your Reformation Arsenal; Reformation; How Not To Disappear; Disappear From Identity Thieves; Disappear In Social Media; Disappear From A Frog; Disappear From A Stalker; Disappear From The Country; Pseudocide 101; Final Thoughts; Acknowledgments; Index

Ahearn was a professional skip tracer, a person paid to track people down. Using both legal and illegal methods, he was usually able to find whoever he was going after as they nearly always left a trail of some sort. In Disappear, he takes the other side of the equation and talks about what someone would need to do to make it more difficult and expensive to find them. While some of them are obvious (stop using social media, don't use your credit cards), others are more tricky and require some time and effort (and money) to put into place. For instance, in one case he had a person open a small checking account and the ATM card was given to a friend who traveled extensively. The friend made small charges in various cities, making it look like the person was moving around a great deal. He coupled that with a visit to a different city to look at apartments and have a credit check run. Any skip trace looking to find the person would have to pursue those leads, all of which would lead to dead ends. Yes, the skip trace may eventually pull the right thread at some point, but the costs to the person looking for you go up significantly.

If you take the information in this book for what it's worth, it's a good reference tool and a fun read. Thinking this is the equivalent of the Witness Protection Program "how-to" manual is a mistake, as it's not. And if the federal authorities are after you, there's little in here that will keep them at bay for very long. But if you're trying to disappear from the annoying ex or a crazy who has a beef with you, How To Disappear might be the key for keeping a step or two ahead of them.

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Library
Payment: Borrowed

Posted by Thomas Admin Duff At 8:48 AM Location Portland, Oregon | Permalink | Comments (3)

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12/27/2010

Book Review - The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World by Chris Guillebeau

12/27/2010

Secunia Advisory SA42703 - IBM Lotus Mobile Connect Multiple Vulnerabilities

12/26/2010

An observation about the YellowSpat this week...

12/26/2010

Book Review - Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr and Twitter Are Your Estate, What's Your Legacy? by Evan Carroll

12/25/2010

Book Review - Strobist Photo Trade Secrets Volume 1: Expert Lighting Techniques by Zeke Kamm

12/25/2010

Book Review - The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing by Lisa Gansky

12/24/2010

Book Review - The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French

12/24/2010

Book Review - The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card

12/24/2010

So why the change as to how I post Notes/Domino job opportunites I find?

12/13/2010

If you're routing mail from Notes apps to Exchange, the [Sign] flag in @MailSend will not work...

12/13/2010

IBM Lotus Notes Traveler Servlet Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability

12/09/2010

So is Lotus conceding the government cloud email market to Microsoft and Google?

12/08/2010

Why I don't think XPages will make a difference in turning the tide...

12/05/2010

Book Review - How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace by Frank M. Ahearn and Eileen C. Horan

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