This web site provides candid, practical, and effective guidelines & techniques for keeping your personal life private. The techniques and guidelines on this web page cover many aspects of keeping information secret, keeping physical objects secret (hidden and secure), and keeping your activities private.

Privacy...the condition under which an individual has the power to choose what information to disclose to whom, without pressure or duress.
Secrecy...the condition in which someone refuses to disclose certain information to certain parties..usually because they are prying.

Protect Your Privacy

Actively protecting your Personal Privacy by keeping portions of your life "secret", can be a lot like learning Martial Arts for self-defense.   In both cases you learn and practice skills that are normally not considered polite, moral, or appropriate for general use.   For example, in Martial Arts you learn to gouge eyes, break limbs, hit, kick, punch, and otherwise perform physical mayhem on your opponent.   None of these actions are considered appropriate to perform just anywhere/anytime...BUT...if. you (or if someone in your care) is attacked and your physical well-being threatened, the use of these skills is justified.   Depending on the circumstances, you might well use skills in self-defense that you may not use at any other time.   The knowledge of physical self-defense skills does not automatically make you evil or immoral.   Only the use to which you put them can cause that distinction.   This same concept holds true for skills (Example:..lying, deception) used to protect your Personal Privacy by "Keeping Your Secrets".
 

In a more perfect world we would rarely (if ever) need to keep secrets. People would respect our privacy and mind their own business.   Unfortunately this is NOT a perfect world.   People tend to pry and probe into your lives much more than we want, forcing us to take steps to protect our privacy...and sometimes take alternatives that we would otherwise not take.   Keeping a Secret is only one of several strategies that you can use to maintain your personal privacy.   Depending on the circumstances, keeping secrets may not be your first (or best) choice.   For example; in any given circumstance you always have 3 choices.
 
1.   Do Nothing.

You can choose to do nothing.  You can let your privacy be invaded...or reveal the pertinent data yourself. You may choose this option because the incident at hand is not important enough to be worth much effort protecting it...or...you may decide that you can't prevail regardless of your effort and that your privacy will be invaded regardless of what you do...or...you may simply not care if anyone knows.

2.   Stand up and Fight for your Privacy:

You may choose this option out of principle...or...the issue may be one that calls for such a stand.   In many cases of Governmental and Medical Privacy issues, standing up and fighting for your privacy may be the only viable option (other than doing nothing).   In the case of Governmental and Medical privacy, it is virtually impossible to keep your information and activities secret. (Example: It is extremely difficult to go to the doctor and somehow keep that secret).

3.   Keep your information, activity, or personal property a secret.

In this scenario you choose to selectively keep your secrets from one (or many) people, whom would otherwise invade your privacy.

If you are serious about keeping something private, if having it discovered will cause you significant problems, significant embarrassment...or...you simply don't think that your life is anybody else's business,   then you need to get serious about keeping your secret and spend time ensuring that it STAYS a secret.   If a secret isn't important enough to spend time on...or...if you are not prepared to take the steps necessary to keep your secret, then you're better off not trying to keep it in the first place.
 
If you are not committed to keeping your secret then save yourself the trouble and embarrassment of having it found out and don't try to keep it secret in the first place.
If on the other hand, you want to keep something secret/private, just how do you DO that?   How do you successfully keep parts of your life private?   How do you keep physical objects private?   How do you keep activities private?   How do you maintain your desired level of personal privacy?
 
This web site will help you find answers to those questions. We will take a look at the implications and consequences of keeping secrets, and provide suggestions on how to make an informed judgment of whether or not to keep secrets...and how to determine your odds of successfully keeping your secret.
 
In the "All About Secrets" section, we go over the basic issues surrounding the most common secrecy problems.   This is the launching pad for the more complex and advanced concepts & tactics that come later.   In subsequent pages, we review detailed Tactics of keeping information secret, along with ideas and tactics for keeping personal property secret, as well as tactics for keeping activities secret.   We will spend time learning how to evaluate the Risks involved in keeping different kinds of secrets...and how to evaluate your chances of success in keeping your secret.   We will also look at a few of the most common mistakes people make in trying to keep secrets,   that generally doom them to failure.
In subseuent sections, we will look at methods of Lie Detection and examine how experts (and amateurs) go about making their determinations of whether or not you are telling the truth.   We will also take a look at the decision processes required to create an effective overall approach to keeping secrets.  

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Keep Your Secrets t Copyright © 1999
The tutorials and articles on these pages are © by KeepYourSecrets.com 1999   and may not be used or reposted without written permission from the author, and may not be reprinted for profit.
 
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