Privacy Oriented

First Digital International Bank (FDIB) was an offshore bank licensed in Montenegro in 2000 that ended up offering anonymous bank accounts to virtually anyone who wanted one. FDIB’s principals decribed the bank as a “private internet offshore banking solution offering the finest in high-interest paying offshore banking, also exchange provider for gold backed digital currencies, anonymous cash cards.” An excellent concept, I thought. Here I will explore what happened to this bank and its ties to Privacy.li and PrivateGoldTrader.com.

I opened many accounts with FDIB in 2005 and 2006, but I never funded the accounts. That is only because I did not have money to fund them at that time, or I would have. I was glad to see there was a bank with balls out there… They offered account funding by bank wire transfer or by e-currencies, such as e-gold, Pecunix and 1mdc - back in the good ol’ days, before e-gold and 1mdc were worthless. In mid-2005, PrivateGoldTrader started accepting “paper based instruments” on behalf of FDIB for easy account funding with cash, money orders or bank drafts (aka casheir’s cheques).

I never ran across a bad report about this bank from anyone - until it went offline. That lead me to assume they operated with integrity up until they stole most clients’ money (I assume). I read one report saying as much about his account on PowerPrivacy’s forums.

What follows here is a report I wrote about the bank’s demise for the site’s entry on AboutUs.org. For some reason, you later needed an account to access the information because it had been deemed as “Adult” content. That doesn’t make any sense, but here it is, out in the open… Read the rest of this entry »

I was reading the Offshore section of the TalkGold Forum a while back, and I’d noticed this post. It says the following about Loyal Bank, an offshore bank headquartered in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

This is their policy on banking secrecy:

“The Bank had the right to cooperate with national and foreign authorities in information provision in cases where official investigation is being carried out on a client or there is official request for information with reference to an investigation.”

I contacted Loyal Bank to inquiry if this meant a court order and I was told, “No, an official request can be a phone call or faxed letter from an police or legal authority.”

LOL, you might as well bank in the US and save money rather than pay Loyal’s very high fees.

Loyal Bank is the worst bank in Caribbean.

That got me wondering… is that so? Surely banking secrecy is stronger than that by law in St. Vincent. …right? Well, I didn’t look up the law, but I did e-mail Loyal Bank and ask them a serries of questions about this. In fact, I didn’t just stop there. I asked a slew of Caribbean area offshore banks the same questions in e-mails and the following is what I’ve learned after one week’s time from when I sent the initial messages…

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a reminder to Americans on this election day 2008: vote for freedom. Don’t compromise. Don’t vote for the “lesser of two evils”. You’re still voting for evil that way. Why the hell would you vote for evil? Myself, I would vote for Ron Paul. Why? Because he is the person that I think should be the president of the United States. Isn’t that what the election is about? Vote for whom you want the president to be, right?

Don’t vote for that fascist war-monger Democrat, Barrack “Barkey” Obomber!

Don’t vote for that socialist war-monger Republican, John McCain.

Neither of them support privacy. Reject them and fire them from their Senatorial jobs.

The whole left-wing Democrats vs. right wing Republicans paradigm is a sham anyway. They’re both corrupt as a four dollar buck. Get over it already. Think like a rational person for just one day!

Again, vote for anyone but them. I recommend Ron Paul, but Ron Paul has endorsed Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party. He previously endorsed Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader and Bob Barr also.

Whatever you do, vote for privacy and freedom.

Speaking of EnCase, the US government’s forensics software of choice… I’ve got that, and you can have it too. My last blog entry reminded me of it, and I thought I’d provide a link or two to you fine Privacy Oriented Blog readers. Normally, it’s restricted to law enforcement types, but the internet is awesome.  So here ya go:

Guidance Software’s EnCase Professional v2.12 (Full Version)

Official EnCE: EnCase Certified Examiner Study Guide, 2nd Edition

You’ll need uTorrent or some other torrent program to download those.

I’m pleased to announce the creation of the latest and sure-to-become great online privacy-related forum, the Privacy Oriented Message Board / Forum!

Check it out here: http://members7.boardhost.com/privacyoriented/

You can post anonymously, get privacy tips and answers to your pressing questions, and participate in privacy-oriented discussion online.

I’ve seen a few sites with people offering these. Most of them come in the form of multi-thousand dollar passports that were stolen blanks from an embassy. Places like www.viza.cc can hook you up with that kind of crap (I’ve never used them, by the way, and this is not an endorsement or recommendation of them and there are many others just like them), but what about an outfit that doesn’t even try to pass itself off as legit (as if they expidite citizenship)? Where do people get the “novelty” passports that don’t cost 8,000 Euros and up?

And I fo sho don’t mean “novelty passport” like that not-even-a-real-country Conch Republic crap.

I’ve looked all over the web, and I tell ya, it’s damn hard to find an out-and-out fake passport supplier. Not that I’d send off for one, but I just wonder what the market is like. Apparently, these things aren’t easy to come by. Anyone wanna throw me a bone? Give me a clue? Leave a comment if you’ve got something. Anonymous comments are enabled. Or, you can reply (anonymously, if need be) at the newly created Privacy Oriented Message Board!

After Just Six Months, Liechtenstein Cracks, Announces Plans to Curb Bank Secrecy.

About a half-year since the LGT banking clients private information breach, otherwise known as the “2008 Liechtenstein tax affair“, the government of Liechtenstein has finally given in to international “pressure”, mostly media pressure, as far as I can tell, and it has turned it’s back on financial privacy, sovereignty, independence and decency. And another one bites the dust!

Who wants to bet that in the years to come we will see the same MO in Andorra and Monaco, the other two naughty microstates still on the dreaded OECD’s tax haven “blacklist”? I think this is merely a game, an operation, a contrivance.

Read the rest of this entry »

From RollingStone’s article about China’s “Golden Shield”:

In Shenzhen one night, I have dinner with a U.S. business consultant named Stephen Herrington. Before he started lecturing at Chinese business schools, teaching students concepts like brand management, Herrington was a military-intelligence officer, ascending to the rank of lieutenant colonel. What he is seeing in the Pearl River Delta, he tells me, is scaring the hell out of him — and not for what it means to China.”

I can guarantee you that there are people in the Bush administration who are studying the use of surveillance technologies being developed here and have at least skeletal plans to implement them at home,” he says. “We can already see it in New York with CCTV cameras. Once you have the cameras in place, you have the infrastructure for a powerful tracking system. I’m worried about what this will mean if the U.S. government goes totalitarian and starts employing these technologies more than they are already. I’m worried about the threat this poses to American democracy.”

Herrington pauses. “George W. Bush,” he adds, “would do what they are doing here in a heartbeat if he could.”

Fortunately, somebody actually cares that this kind of thing not be setup in the US. Unfortunately, this man cannot see that the US has already devolved into a totalitarian regime.

…or at least that’s what the International Tax Review is reporting in their May 6th, 2008 article that can be found here. I could not determine how true this is just from the article. The statements they link to don’t show anything but the VFSC’s main page when I click the link.

Article excerpts follow.

Australia’s investigation of tax evasion by individuals and businesses has forced the Pacific tax haven of Vanuatu to reverse its long standing policy of banking secrecy.

As part of the operation called Project Wickenby, a long-running multi-agency inquiry into the abuse of offshore financial centres, Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers arrested a senior accountant, Robert Agius, in Perth in Western Australia.

Following the arrest of Agius, the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC), the jurisdiction’s regulator, said that it would overturn its policy of banking secrecy. A complete overhaul of Vanuatu’s legal structure related to companies would be introduced shortly and put into force by the end of the year. Australia’s tax commissioner Michael D’Ascenzo has previously identified Vanuatu as the chief target of the tax office.

The commissioner of the VFSC, George Andrews, said the regulator would, in future, penalise Vanuatu institutions which provided services allowing Australian citizens and companies to avoid domestic tax. All company and trust service providers will be licensed by the VFSC and any breaches of regulation could lead to revocation of an operating licence.

That is sad and too bad. Why they don’t just sign some treaties and make some agreements with Australia and maybe New Zealand in the future, I don’t know. That’s what they should do. Don’t just throw it all away! Say it ain’t so, Vanuatu!

It is funny how the article mentions that the bank accounts they busted were set up with Westpac and ANZ, because those two banks aren’t covered by Vanuatu’s banking secrecy legistlation. They are domestic banks and only the offshore banks are protected (bound by secrecy laws).

…and Other General Privacy-Friendly E-mail Tips

You can fight back very effectively whenever you’re filling out of those forms on the internet that want you to disclose your name and other information about yourself that you may feel is none of their business, and you know they don’t need it to provide you the service but you want their service. It’s easy too!

The first thing to remember, of course, is that you don’t have to give them real information in most cases. Now, this may be a violation of their Terms in some cases, but sometimes it is not and reality has it that it’s near impossible for them to verify your information. Most of the time, all they want your information for is marketing, and who wants junkmail? So you can just put in “Joe Blow” and “123 Main St.” and all that good stuff. If it’s on a corporate or government form, I usually claim I don’t have an e-mail address. That’s just one less piece of information they have on me. I suggest you do the same whenever possible.

Sometimes you need an e-mail address and you need your e-mail address to work so you can use the service. You have to be able to get e-mail from these people. There are various services that you can use instead of giving them your real e-mail address however.

The first and easiest option is to give them a “disposable” e-mail address. If you don’t mind others being able to read these e-mails, you can give any e-mail address with the following domain names after the @ symbol:

• Mailinator.com
• PookMail.com
• TemporaryInbox.com
• SlopsBox.com
• Dodgit.com
• Guerrilla Mail
• UnDisposable.net
• BlockFilter
• SlopsBox

Then just go to the corresponding website, put that address in and you can read any e-mail they sent you right there.

For example, you could just make up TheCrackFox123925091501@mailinator.com and put that in the form you are filling out to sign up for, say, BayWords.com. Then just go to www.mailinator.com and type TheCrackFox123925091501 into the login there and you can see and read any e-mail sent to that address lately. Nifty trick, eh? Just FYI, I prefer www.pookmail.com. Mailinator.com is blocked on some sites because it is becoming better known.

Next we have free, temporary e-mail forwarding to your real inbox. With this, you can type in a pre-arranged junk e-mail address and it will forward all that e-mail to your real e-mail address for a pre-defined amount of time. The services that you can setup a forwarding address with are the following:

• TrashMail.net
• MailExpire
• TemporaryForwarding.com
• EndJunk.com
• Walala.org
• FreeAutoBot
• Mintemail

Many of these have the option of using some generic domain name too. For example, TemporaryForwarding.com will let you use mx0.wwwnew.eu, bodhi.lawlita.com or mail.htl22.at as the domain name of your new e-mail forwarding or temp address.

Those are pretty good techniques for limiting spam from the companies you sign up for services with.

While I’m on the topic, I suppose I’ll briefly go into sending anonymous e-mails. Sometimes I want to send anonymous e-mails, just “one-offs,” to various organizations or to myself for later retrieval but I don’t want to or can’t log into my webmail account. So here’s what I do…

I just go to one of the following sites and send a free, anonymized e-mail that doesn’t even require making an account. You can just type in the recipient and message and send away…

• MailFreeOnline
• SendAnonymousEmail.net
• CyberAtlantis
• Anonymouse Anonymous e-Mail (time delayed)

The last one there is an “Anonymous Remailer.”

Another similar method of info-sending can be had through:

• WillSelfDestruct

…although that’s a tad more complicated. That one will just send your e-mail recipient a password to get access to an encrypted webpage with your message on it.

That’s about it for now. Enjoy the links.

P.S. …and just a little nugget of fuzziness for your noggin: MySpace does not need your real e-mail address. I signed up once with something similar to not-an-e-mailaddy@not-an-e-mailaddy123.com (obviously not real), and I can still login to this day. No need for confirmation, but if they ever change that, you can use a temporary e-mail address.