I'm sorry, this topic is kinda USA centric. At least the details. Maybe not the core idea though. For the non-USA readers, KYC = know your customer.
I am soon to move to a new home for a job xfer. I wish I could do it privately. I had a stalker who broke into my home. I am still apprehensive and tense even though it was years ago. It feels impossible to move privately ๐
I know about Michael Bazzel's Privacy books, and I have read over them. They are good and I follow his advize for some things. I still feel overwhelmed and don't think I can manage it by myself. One problem is, the last edition of the Privacy book was years ago. KYC is in many more places now. Like utilities and services you need when moving to a new home. I run into more things that demand a copy of a gov photo ID or they will not give you a service. This data makes toward the credit bureaus, they always learn. It used to be you could pay for utilities from an LLC, but that often triggers a KYC check now and sometimes they want to copy your ID.
I already try to fight my addy appearing in people search sites but that is hard. There are so many of them. Some outside the USA and do not follow takedown requests.
There must be ways to do this! Maybe they are only available to the rich and famous? I am not rich or famous, lol. But I am middle class and would spend a moderate sum for a service to handle this. I do not feel I can do it on my own. Maybe I could years ago before so many attacks on privacy, but no more.
Has anyone successfully moved AND kept a new home addy private from data brokers? Did you use a service or company to help?
Thank you for this. I am glad to hear you had success!
I do most of those, but not so far number 4.
I don't know about utilities though. I believe that my current power company sells their customer lists, because I get junk mail at a misspelling of my name on file with them.
Did you have any trouble with moving companies? I didn't move since the "surveillance economy". It is hard for me to imagine moving companies wouldn't capitalize on selling your new address where they had to deliver.
I have also heard that it is better not to file a change of address form with the post office. Instead to change the address on file with your charge card companies or banks directly.
Check with your utilities, there's often an opt-out option for the information sales.
I've always moved myself, but I'd just find a locally owned moving company willing to deal in cash. It's good advice for most stuff. avoid online forms, and there are a lot of instances where you can just use false info.
The only reason to change your address with the PO is forwarding. if you're worried about missing mail, you should change it. Then go to the DMA Choice site and opt out with your new information. Update your actual business info with each company.
I use an app called PaperKarma to aromatically opt me out of junk mail that comes through. they do a reasonably good job, but they're a subscription service, so I save up the junk, pay on sub cycle, process the opt outs and then cancel.
I forgot to mention, I also pay for a masking service for masked emails and phone numbers. The free burner options tend to be blocked these days.
What this takes is just diligence and patience.
There's also some misinformation in this thread:
Partially false. These industries, especially government and healthcare are regulated and can only sell a certain subset of your data, mostly anonymized, if at all. I work in the government IT sector, and PII is serious, even under the current trump nightmare.