Any Client or potential client who is concerned with maintaining privacy and preventing others from gaining access to personal information , and let me just say that if you are a criminal defense client this should be of utmost importance. Likewise if you are a family law client and involved in a pending divorce suit or even worse a child custody suit; you should be equally as concerned with keeping your life as private as possible.
A wise lawyer will advise clients that anything they are doing with an electronic communicative device IE: Cell phone, blackberry, I-Phone, Pc, Laptop, credit card processing machines can & usually will be discovered @ the worst possible time.
To prevent your Social Security number , income information, communication with your lawyer, or any other secrets from falling into the wrong hands:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~For the Love of Peter Skeeter Jumping Jeter, the snoopy doopy doggy dog~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~Do not reveal them in e-mail or on-line~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No, I am not so archaic and old that I expect you to use a coin pay telephone to communicate; I'm doubting any of you over the age of 35 even remember the pay telephones.
Yes, I do understand the electric world is addictive, why do you think I spend countless hours learning to blog? Well I do that because we live in a very strange land now, and it is becoming more and more foreign to me each day.
We live in a foreign land where lawyers, who are not known for generating more work for themselves; yet these same lawyers all have multi paged web sites with graphics and shocks and bolts and words I cannot even spell. As if that were not enough as soon as the lawyers like me finally caught on to the need , the requirement, the must have buzz, gotta gotta have a website or we will become obsolete old timers still clinging to our yellow pages. Yes, I am quite sure that my kids, the very ones who are laughing hysterically at the fact that mom & dad did not have mobile phones at age 7; heck I am still trying to explain my old party line to them, but the puzzled looks have confirmed that I need not even try.
And yes the very same kids laughing @ me right now because I did not have a cell phone growing up "yeah, right sure mom, like we believe that. How did you call your mom or dad when you needed them when you were a kid?" I tried to explain that I hoped they would be @ home and I would dial our home phone. I lost them though.
My little boy Bennett, genuinely seemed worried for me "Mommy what did you do if you could not reach them" In my attempt to alleviate his worried face I only made the situation worse, " Oh don't worry sweetie, mommy never had any problems getting a hold of my mom when I was a kid" then as I turned to grab a coke I added and I knew as soon as i added it I was sunk, " the only time we ever had a problem when I was a kid was id the line was busy"
His saucer eyes popped up landing directly on my face, now he was utterly confused, "what, what do you mean, mom, are you tricking us? What are you talking about? How can a phone be busy." In rapid succession he shot off" How can the phone be busy, what does it do? A phone doesn't do anything to get busy, it can't move or anything, huh, right?" I knew I would not win this one and so I told a little fib, "yea baby I was fooling with yu.that phone did not get up and go make a sandwich, it was not busy at all" Whew!!!! conversation ended.
So yes, I know the electronic world is cool, addictive, easy, and so many other words, bottom line is it is easy.
Computers can be a far better way to reach out and touch someone than Ma Bell ever was.
It is necessary for you to learn the best ways to protect your privacy, particularly if a court proceeding could be in your future. Let me suggest some things:
- avoid cell phones at all cost
- Avoid sending e-mails-----------except for the most innocent & dull messages
- Just bite the bullet & avoid the Internet completely
- Avoid using Credit Card & debit Cards
Credit cards & debit cards create a dangerous paper trail and there is absolutely no way to avoid it
But: if you insist on using electronics to communicate & to make purchases please read & follow the below listed ideas. They can at at a minimum help slow the process of others gaining access to your private information.
- get a brand new computer, below we will discuss how you should pay for it. You might as well get a lap top because it is much smaller and it is portable
Keep it away from you spouse, your friends, co-workers, and your children. In fact do not even let anyone know that it exist. The one caveat here is that if your problems you are facing do not involve your husband and everything is good between the two of you; then you can make an exception and let him know about your new purchase.
If you and your spouse are getting along and your court problems do not involve a family law suit against him/her; there is not reason to deceive your spouse and risk creating a rift between the two of you.
- Learn how to cover your tracks, IE: clean up the cookies; clear the history; wipe the hard drive clean, and do all of these precautions often.
- Do not keep incriminating information on the hard drive
- Do not save any pictures, downloads, attachments, or copies of any e-mails.
- Learn, if you do not already know, that even if you do not save a picture or a document or a download to a yahoo account for example. Once you view it, it is mixed in with your yahoo documents, easy for even the novice computer user to locate
- Get a secure e-mail address account
- Get a web based e-mail account
- web-based e-mail is particularly nice & the least likely to be a target for a subpoena
- By web-based, I do not mean AOL on-lineThink Gmail or Yahoo
- Do not access the account from the family computer, your office or work computer, any other computer that you can be tied to
- use only the new lap top that you have just purchased
- Purchase the new laptop with cash only or better yet a pre-paid untraceable, unidentifiable visa credit card (unless the place of purchase is going to require you to show identification with the pre-paid visa purchase then you will have to come up with the cash.
- Do not download any emails
- Just view and write
- use the account to communicate with your attorney, your special friend, Tamara, or Candi, or Misty or Stormy whatever, and anyone else whose communication needs to remain secret.
- Do not use your real name when you
