Book Review: "How to Disappear"
"How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish Without a Trace" by Frank M Ahearn, is a great book from an ex-skip tracer turned disappearance specialist, that is someone who helps others leave their past behind and create a new life, while destroying as many connections between their past and their new life as possible. In this book, Frank offers amazing tips from laying out misinformation to avoid association, to disinformation to through pursuers off your trail, all the way to hiring a private investigator to see what they can dig up on you, only to further bury those leads before your real advisory can find them. Overall, it's a bunch of excellent OSINT and recon tips, from the world of skip tracing, which can easily be applied to the world of hacking. I listened to the book on Audible for $15, which was enjoyable at 5 hours and 10 minutes, and I recommend the book to fellow hackers, those into OSINT, intelligence analysts, and even those looking to disappear. Overall, I give the book 6 out of 10 stars, because despite being estranged to traditional hacking, his approaches and techniques, such as using social engineering and OSINT, are techniques many hackers are familiar with and could benefit from learning his methods. Further, he introduces many techniques that hackers may be unfamiliar with, but that frequent travelers or abuse victims may be well aware of, such as having mail drops, safe houses, and go bags pre-established. He also includes several privacy and security tips regarding one's assets, such as how to set up alerting on your accounts, so you can be on top of identity or asset intrusion / fraud. However, at times the book feels overwhelming, like the audience is listening to Frank brain-dump his tactics, rather than an effective guide for disappearing. The following are the chapters of the book, in hopes they give you more insight to the contents of the book:
Chapter 1: I'm Frank, Nice To Meet You
Chapter 2: Meet Your Enemy, The Skip Tracer
Chapter 3: A Skip Tracer's Best Friends
Chapter 4: Time to Disappear
Chapter 5: MisInformation
Chapter 6: Tracks and Clues In The Home
Chapter 7: DisInformation
Chapter 8: Your Reformation Arsenal
Chapter 9: Reformation
Chapter 10: How Not To Disappear
Chapter 11: Disappear From Identity Thieves
Chapter 12: Disappear In Social Media
Chapter 13: Disappear From A Frog
Chapter 14: Disappear From A Stalker
Chapter 15: Disappear From The Country
Chapter 16: Pseudocide 101
Chapter 17: Final Thoughts
Almost as important as his tips for disappearing are Frank's tips for what not to do! These include such no-nos as acquiring fraudulent documents, assuming the identity of someone else, faking your own death, living a new life too similar to your old one or abandoning a wife or child. Frank cautions users to pepper their real registration information among various services with false information, or at the least set up a privacy guard to act as shield to this information and set up alerting with that privacy guard when inquiries to that information are made. Frank seems to be a treasure trove of these tips, which he also publishes on his privacy blog, and dishes out in multiple interviews. The book is also chock full of interesting stories and anecdotes, that clearly come from personal experience. Many other reviewers have questioned the credibility of his statements, as a fellow hacker I can tell his tactics and methods aren't only plausible, rather that he speaks with the experience of someone who has pulled off these techniques time and time again. With that, I'll leave you with the same quote Frank starts the book with, which is certainly as applicable today, in this scene, as the day it was written: "All war is deception", Sun Tzu.
