Reputation and Privacy

When we are thinking about our personal brand, let’s play that out to it’s successful conclusion. Imagine it’s 5 years from now, and you have built a successful personal brand. You are well known in your field, you have a large following, and you are making a lot of money - many millions. This is the dream, right? But what happens when you achieve that level of success? What are the risks to your safety and privacy?

If you have a pseudonym or a brand name, you have a layer of separation between your public persona and your private life. This is a significant layer of protection that can help mitigate many of the risks associated with being a public figure. Sure, you could still be doxxed, but having that buffer offers you more protection against people that might want to harm you, steal from you, or harass you.

Public Information

Your real name is in several types of public records including:

• Property Records: If you own property, your name, address, and other details are publicly accessible.
• Voter Registration: Your voter registration details are public, including your name and address.
• Business Filings: If you own a business, your name is often listed in public business registration records.
• Professional Profiles: Your LinkedIn profile, conference speaker bios, and other professional profiles often include your real name and details about your career.
• Social Media: Your real name is likely used on social media platforms, which can reveal your location, interests, and connections.
• News Articles: If you have been mentioned in news articles or press releases, your name and details about your career may be publicly available.
• Court Records: If you have ever been involved in a legal case, your name may appear in court records, which are often public.
• Domain Registrations: If you own a domain name, your name may be listed in the WHOIS database, unless you use privacy protection services.
• Professional Associations: Membership in professional organizations may require your real name and details, which can be publicly accessible.
• Public Speaking Engagements: If you speak at conferences or events, your name and details about your talks may be published online.
• Data Brokers: There are various databases that aggregate public information, such as white pages, people search sites, and data broker services, which can include your name, address, and other personal details.

Universally Good Ideas

Regardless of whether you want to use your real name or a pseudonym, there are some universally good ideas that you should consider when building your personal brand, and especially if it starts becoming successful.

Put Your Assets in a Trust

Using a trust to hold your assets can provide a layer of protection and privacy. A trust can help shield your personal information from public records, making it harder for malicious actors to find out where you live or how much you are worth. This is the idea of a legal entity (the trust) owning your assets, and you are just the executor or beneficiary of that trust.

• Privacy Protection: Trusts can help keep your personal information private, as the trust’s name is listed in public records instead of your own.
• Asset Protection: Trusts can provide a layer of protection against creditors, lawsuits, and other financial risks.
• Estate Planning: Trusts can help with estate planning, ensuring that your assets are distributed according to your wishes without going through probate.
• Tax Benefits: Depending on the type of trust, there may be tax benefits that can help you save money in the long run.
• Control Over Distribution: Trusts allow you to specify how and when your assets are distributed, which can be particularly useful for protecting family members or minors.

Types of trusts to consider:

• Revocable Living Trust: Allows you to maintain control over your assets while providing privacy and avoiding probate.
• Irrevocable Trust: Transfers assets out of your estate, providing stronger protection against creditors and lawsuits.

Use a P.O. Box or Business Address

Using a P.O. Box or a business address for your public-facing communications can help protect your home address and personal information. This is especially important if you are using your real name, as it can help prevent doxxing and other privacy invasions.

• P.O. Box: A P.O. Box can be used for receiving mail without revealing your home address. This is a simple and effective way to maintain privacy.
  • TIP: A local P.O. Box provider lets you receive mail at the street address of the post office. This is useful for a business registration where they don’t allow P.O. Boxes. So, you can have a P.O. Box, but also have a mailing address that is a street address.
• Business Address: If you have a business, you can use your business address for public filings, registrations, and communications. This keeps your personal address private while still allowing you to receive important documents.
• Virtual Mailbox Services: These services provide a physical address where your mail is received and then scanned and emailed to you, allowing you to manage your mail without revealing your home address.

Now that you have a P.O. Box or business address, you can use that for all of your public-facing communications, without exposing your home address.

Limit Public Information

Limit the amount of personal information you share publicly. This is key for helping to maintain your privacy and safety. This includes being cautious about what you post on social media, professional profiles, and public forums.

Sharing private information publicly has limited upside and unbounded downside. While it may feel good to share your personal life, it can lead to unintended consequences, such as doxxing, harassment, or identity theft.

Pay for Privacy Services

Consider using privacy services to help protect your personal information. These services can help remove your information from public databases, data brokers, and other sources that may expose your personal details.

DeleteMe

I pay for and highly recommend DeleteMe (this is an affiliate link). How it works is you give them your name and name variations, all the places you’ve lived, phone numbers and email addresses, and they will keep going back to those data brokers and request to remove your information. They will also monitor for new listings and remove them as they appear.

You might think: “Pfft! I can do that myself!”. Let me tell you, there are many dozens of data brokers out there. Worse, there are maybe a dozen that are permanent (e.g. Spokeo, Radaris, WhitePages, etc), but the rest are constantly re-branding, or there are new ones popping up all of the time. It is truly Whac-A-Mole to try to keep up with them all. Plus, they don’t make it easy to remove your information, plus you’d have to keep track of it all, and follow-up.

So, with a service like DeleteMe, they do this quarterly for you. They send takedown requests to all of the data brokers, follow-up on previous requests, and make sure that your information didn’t pop back up where it’s already been removed. If it does, they issue another takedown request. Then, they provide you this detailed report of what they did and what the current status is of your information.

As of this writing in May 2025, this service is:

If interested, you can use my affiliate link to get a 20% discount. I highly recommend this service, and I have been using it since 2022.

Use a Password Manager

Using a password manager is essential for maintaining your online security and privacy. A password manager helps you create, store, and manage complex passwords for all of your accounts, reducing the risk of password reuse and making it easier to maintain strong security practices. Hopefully you are already aware of this concept, but did want to mention it.

Use MFA/2FA Everywhere

Using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) or Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is a critical step in protecting your online accounts and personal information. MFA adds an extra layer of security by requiring not just a password, but also a second form of verification, such as a code sent to your phone or an authentication app.

Risks of Using Your Real Name

Using your real name as a personal brand and then achieving significant wealth and public recognition creates substantial privacy and safety risks you may not have considered.

These aren’t to be alarmist, but let’s go through the mental exercise of what the risks are. Let’s do a threat model for a moment and consider the potential threats and risks that come with using your real name as a personal brand, especially when you have significant wealth and public visibility.

1. Physical Threats

They already know who are you, and your wealth is public knowledge. Without taking precautions about publicly available information, your home address, workplace, and family details are easily discoverable. This creates a range of risks:

• Home Invasion/Robbery: Public property records directly reveal your home address. Criminals specifically targeting wealthy individuals can easily locate your residence to plan burglaries or home invasions.
• Kidnapping for Ransom (K&R): High visibility and known wealth make you a prime target for kidnapping. Public records and online profiles provide the essential information needed to track movements and plan an abduction.
• Assault/Stalking: Disgruntled individuals (e.g., someone who feels wronged online, a fired employee, or someone with a personal vendetta) can easily find your location or workplace to confront, stalk, or physically harm you.
• Threats to Family: Your spouse, children, or other relatives living at the same address (or whose addresses can be inferred/looked up) become potential targets for intimidation, harassment, or harm as leverage against you.

2. Financial Targeting & Fraud

• Spear Phishing & Whaling Attacks: Malicious actors craft highly personalized, convincing phishing emails, calls, or messages leveraging details from your public life (work, interests, contacts) to trick you or your staff into revealing credentials, initiating wire transfers, or installing malware.
• Business Email Compromise (BEC): Attackers impersonate you (CEO/Founder) using information gleaned online to trick employees, vendors, or partners into sending money or sensitive data.
• Identity Theft: Public data (name, DOB, address history from voter/property records) combined with professional details provides a robust foundation for opening fraudulent accounts, taking loans, or filing fake tax returns.
• Cryptocurrency/Asset Theft: If your wealth includes significant crypto holdings known or suspected, you become a prime target for hackers aiming to compromise personal devices, exchanges, or cold storage.
• Investment Scams: Scammers may target you with “exclusive” fraudulent investment opportunities, knowing you have capital, or impersonate you to defraud others.

3. Privacy Invasion & Harassment

• Doxxing Amplification: While already using your real name, adversaries will actively seek and publish more private details (family info, unlisted addresses, financial snippets, personal history) to harass or incite others against you.
• Aggressive Stalking (Online & Offline): Real-time location tracking attempts, constant unwanted communication (calls, emails, messages), showing up at home/work, and monitoring family activities become far more likely and severe.
• Swatting: Malicious individuals call emergency services with false reports (hostage situation, bomb threat) to your known address, triggering a dangerous armed police response.
• Reputational Attacks & Blackmail: Adversaries dig for any past misstep, controversial opinion, or fabricate compromising material to extort money or damage your reputation.

4. Workplace Harassment

• Office Security Threats: Easily identifiable workplace location makes your office a target for disgruntled individuals, protesters, or criminals seeking confrontation or disruption.
• Employee Targeting: Attackers might target less security-conscious employees as a stepping stone to gain access to your systems, data, or physical proximity.
• Supply Chain Attacks: Vendors or partners servicing your known company/location could be compromised to reach you.

5. Reputational Sabotage

• Deepfakes & Impersonation: Malicious actors can create convincing fake audio/video of you saying or doing damaging things, or impersonate you on social media/forums to spread harmful messages or scams.
• Smear Campaigns: Competitors or malicious actors may orchestrate online campaigns using your high visibility to spread false information or amplify minor controversies.

6. Exploitation of Family & Associates

• Family Targeting: As mentioned, family members become direct targets for scams (e.g., “Your husband is in jail, wire bail money”), harassment, or physical threats.
• Friend/Associate Exploitation: Criminals may target friends or former colleagues for information or access, leveraging your name and relationship.

Using Your Real Name Exacerbates These Risks

• Direct Linkage: All public records (property, voter registration, business filings) and professional profiles (LinkedIn, conference speaker bios, press articles) instantly tie back to the exact individual.

• Reduced Anonymity Buffer: There’s no separation between your professional persona and your private, legal identity. Everything connects directly.

• Ease of Research: Malicious actors have a single, unambiguous name to search across all data brokers, public databases, and social media platforms, building a comprehensive profile quickly.

• Amplified Visibility: Success attracts attention, including from those with ill intent. Your name becomes a beacon.

Mitigation

While extremely risky, using your real name isn’t impossible with extreme precautions:

• Asset Protection: Complex structures (Trusts, LLCs) for property ownership/holding assets. PO Boxes/business addresses for all public filings.
• Physical Security: Home security systems, gated communities, potentially executive protection details. Strict privacy about residences.
• Digital Security: Impeccable cyber hygiene, hardware security keys, dedicated secure devices, professional security audits, strict social media privacy (no location tagging, family photos).
• Professional Privacy: Use business addresses/agents for all corporate filings. Be cautious about speaking engagements/PR. Vetting of employees/vendors.
• Family Protocols: Education for family on security, privacy settings for them, potentially unlisted addresses/schools.
• Reputation Monitoring & Legal: Services to track online mentions/impersonations. Legal counsel ready for takedowns/defamation.

Conclusion

Using your real name as a highly successful IT brand significantly lowers the barrier for malicious actors (from petty criminals to sophisticated fraudsters) to locate you, target you financially, threaten your physical safety, invade your privacy, harass you and your family, and damage your reputation. The wealth acts as a powerful motivator, and the public records provide the roadmap. While mitigation strategies exist, they are costly, complex, and require lifelong diligence. Many in similar positions choose pseudonyms or corporate brands specifically to create this critical layer of separation between their public success and their private lives.