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!
.
|