Protecting Your Privacy Protects Your Safety:

Why is protecting your privacy so important to protecting your safety?

Because we don't want you to become a crime victim.

Our Art Director used to work in Law Enforcement, and witnessed the confession of a burglar we're going to tell you about. This is a true story:

A few years ago, there was a gang of burglars operating in the Washington DC area that committed more than 100 successful burglaries over a 3-year period before they finally got caught.

And they got caught only by accident.

The news media had dubbed them the "Beltway Bandits" and the police didn't have a single lead.

The Beltway Bandits targeted random families in affluent communities around the DC area by conducting a phony telephone "survey" about the prospective victims' TV viewing habits through the week.

If someone they called answered a question with "no, we never watch TV [at a particular day and time] because we always go [shopping, bowling, out to dinner, to church, or whatever] then," the Bandits knew they had a victim.

And when the Beltway Bandits committed a burglary, they took everything. They would back up a large truck in their victims' driveway while the victims were out for the evening, and 8 to 10 of the gang members would break into the house, take anything that might be of value, and be gone before their victims returned to an empty house.

The biggest worry the police had was what might happen if a victim should return home before these guys finished their burglarizing.

The burglaries occurred on different days of the week, at different times of the day. The neighbors never saw anything, and the cops didn't have a clue. This went on for over three years without a break in the case.

And then, just by chance, two members of the gang got arrested in Arlington VA on the same day, for two totally unrelated charges having nothing to do with their burglaries. One was arrested on a minor drug offense, and one on a traffic violation.

While one gang member was sitting in the interrogation room, waiting to be fingerprinted and interrogated, he saw his fellow gang member standing out in the hall, also in handcuffs.

Assuming that the Beltway Bandits had finally run out of luck with their burglary spree, the gang member in the interrogation room figured the judge might go easier on him if he made a full confession to everything right away.

And that's exactly what he did, and the whole gang went to prison. End of story.

Now what does this have to do with your safety?

It's very simple: Suppose you were looking at restaurant listings on a website, and somebody was tracking your online activities (which we don't do) ...

And suppose somebody tracking your activities noticed that you spent a longer time than normal looking at information about a particular restaurant.

If someone had such information about your online activities, they could reasonably assume that you were getting ready to go out to dinner. They could also reasonably assume that if you went out to dinner, you might be gone for 2 or 3 hours.

And what if they also had your address? Think about it ...

And that's why we recommend keeping your private information private!
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