You may not have to register your guns, depending on state requirements. But getting the CCW permit will get you into a government database as a gun owner, and one who is serious about protecting your life with the firearm.

Are there alternatives? Open carry is one, if allowed by your state. But, the public and even some LEOs don't like or understand open carry. I have seen reports of people being arrested and charged for inducing panic in my state, where open carry is legal. You could consider non-lethal self-defense items, such as pepper spray or stun guns, if legal where you live. Or, you could carry concealed without a permit, but take the risk of arrest. Some people take the attitude that it's better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.

Skip or Skippy for Peter
Butch for John
Trixie for Beatrice (no I am not Beatrice)
Peggy for Margaret
Buffy for Bufelia
Nita for Bianca
Kitty for Katrina, Kathy, or anyone who wants to use it.
Plus a ton of different spellings:

Eric, Erick, Ericka, Rick
John, Jon, Ione—yeah who would have thought? Ione is pronounced John in Europe!

Also, you can add the letter K to many names: Nail, becomes KNAIL pronounced Nail, Napp becomes Knapp pronounced Nap. Scandinavians use both K and G on the front of other consonants. They also double up on consonants—Erickksson is Erickson.

Originally I started studying the origins of names because I am a writer. Research started with my own family names. I soon became educated that many names I took for granted as being a person’s real sir name and first name, were really derivatives of other names. I just found out, that my grandfather “removed an consonant—H” from the first part of our last name to make it easier to pronounce. But, I am thinking about adding it back in because it would change where we are filed now, it would take us from the T, R files to the T, H, R. files, it is a small thing, but could come in handy sometime. Have fun with your invisible way of living—it keeps it positive.

1. Follow the advice given by J.J. Luna and the posters on his site. Understand, you will never be able to live your life the way it was before knowledge of stalker. Because it has been going on for two years, it tells me, your stalker is very close or is very comfortable around your house. Hire a locksmith to not just rekey your house, but relock your doors I recommend Medeco Locks on all doors and windows, portable alarm system works too.

2. Don’t trust anyone—not even mother—until you come to a final conclusion with your stalker. Loose lips sink ships, and assist stalkers.

3. Physically protect yourself. Get the gun, take the shooting range lessons, install the cameras, and stop using your land-line. Put 911 on your cell phone speed dial, start driving in your rear-view mirror, take note of the people around you at all times, immediately check your house for “extra” cables running from your phone lines, cable lines etc. follow the lines and see where they go, look up and down something could be buried “just under” the flower bed dirt, hiding a hidden camera watching you.

4. Sit down and evaluate who benefits the most by stalking you? If you rent, it could be a landlord or the Property Management Company the landlord hired to over see the property. If you rent, then move-but mis direct old landlord about your new location.

5. Neighbors? Could be a neighbor or a employee of a neighbor—their gardener, grounds keeper to an close apartment complex or business?

6. Mailman? There are many documented cases of strange and stalker type mailmen.

7. I am going to assume that your stalker is a male, or maybe a masculine lesbian. Because it has been going on for two years, and they seem to enjoy being in your home, or frightening you at night. (Think David Letterman's stalker ordeal)

8. If you have any pets, take them to mothers or another safe location until this is completely resolved. Pets often end up being he victims of a vicious stalker, especially if stalker knows you are on to him, or has been found out.

9. I speak for experience. Our family was stalked from 1990 to 2007. Our stalker turned to be a shyster attorney who was embezzling Trust Funds from our family that had been set aside for the care of a elderly, disabled relative. After our relative passed away, this attorney had the audacity to charge the Trust $17,000.00 thousand dollars for “investigations”.

10. If you hire a private investigator, go to Rip Off Report dot com, before you hire anyone. There are some real shyster types who will actually endanger you more.

11. Good luck, we are all with you here.

Submitted Link #1: http://www.wired.com:80/techbiz/people/magazine/17...

... Regarding item 1:

Medeco locks may not be as secure as you think, Trixie. See link below.

Is it necessary? Maybe not. Fortunately VA is an open carry state which means you can openly carry a handgun in plain sight. This you can do without obtaining permits or registering ect. If you prefer to be low key and less obvious about it you can take a concealed carry permit class and go that route. Check your local area about classes, go talk to the instructors they will be more then helpful about educating you on local and state laws.

Is it worth it? In short yes. In my opinion letting someone else be responsible for you and your families safety is the same as letting someone else be responsible for your privacy.

Canada doesn't have a list of approved disabilities - but you've given me food for thought. I'm investigating what we do have.

I did once, years ago, speak to the head of security and he said there was absolutely no problem and I was welcome to shop - and nothing changed. The harrassment didn't even abate for a minute. And who's to prove it?

But I'm afraid we've gone away from my main point - how can I disappear, fall below the radar, if the malls & banks are recognizing my face all the time? Being "special" would draw more attention to me, not get rid of it.

... Can you go with a friend to a bank in another city or province? You will be there just one time. After that, everything can be by mail and ATM.

The key to preventing an ex from finding you is to make use of the benefits of electronic banking. First, if possible, and I think it is, have the funds deposited electronically and automatically. The government likes this because it saves them money and prevents fraud.

Here's the trick: Open a bank account in your mother's name for the deposits in a city as far away from where she actually lives as is possible and convenient. Be sure to use a bank that has electronic Internet banking available, and be sure to set the account up so that you can initiate an electronic inter-bank wire transfer of the funds online. You have to give the bank a physical location, which is why you need a ghost address, and if you can, sign up for paperless statements or have the statements sent to one of Jack's Alaska mail-drop/forwarding addresses.

Next, obtain a NM LLC and, using a nominee to open a commercial account in a convenient local bank that also accepts wire transfers incoming and offers debit cards to "employees" of the LLC. The nominee will have to obtain a TIN from the Feds, which can be done on line in a matter of minutes, in order to open the account.

Mom now has two options available; operate locally with a debit card on the account in her name at the remote bank, which will be fairly secure but could reveal a pattern of local purchases revealing her location if the stalker has access to the statements, or let the deposit drop in the remote bank and then transfer it to the LLC account by wire, and use the "employee" card obtained from the local LLC bank in her name for purchases and cash advances.

To get an employee card in her name, the "president" of the LLC, which is someone with a different last name than either the mother or the daughter/son, goes to the bank to set up a drawing account for this "employee." Mom may or may not have to show up (tell the bank she's on a trip and you need to mail the card to her and have the President sign the signature card in her stead...this worked for me), but should not have to provide an SSN since she's not technically opening an account. Just have a plausible argument for the bank. You might even want to be completely up front with the local LLC bank and tell them that this is being set up to avoid a stalker. Banks are generally very cooperative in this regard and take your privacy very seriously, so long as they cover all the bases regarding the federal banking laws.

If the stalker is able to figure out which bank her SSN check is deposited in, all he gets is the wrong city entirely, and if he's able to break the remote bank's security all he'll find is that the money is transferred to an LLC account somewhere else. He won't even have a name to link to from there. That's about as secure as you can get these days.

... Thanks for the detailed info, Sebastian. In the present case, it may be overkill. I lean toward Nona's solution #6063, but let's see what happens.

Note to Kate -- Please let us know how you resolve this.

To give you some idea of the shocks, encountered while moving around, a football player was outfitted with strain gages and then tackled. The accelerations were on the order of 1200 Gs and 1200 Jerks. This was done by the US Airforce in order to determine how much a human can stand in support of a design of an ejector seat. (A G is the acceleration of gravity on earth. A Jerk is the rate of change of acceleration, while acceleration is the rate of change of velocity. Jerks are felt the same as acceleration.)

GPS will be the preferred method of tracking for some time to come.

For the sake of being able to "use big words" to the security staff, the need for sunglasses is caused by a condition known medically as PHOTOPHOBIA.

My apologies if Chris is female - please change all the pronouns to feminine pronouns if that's the case.

The times that I've tried some sort of disguise or hiding my face, they have an employee follow me around too close, trick me into looking up at bright lights, get 2 of them talking over my head loudly ...

I have no driver's licence (never learned) and no passport (don't travel) - but our health cards have our pics - until age 65. Shopping malls are private property; they can do what they like to 'defend' themselves.

This has been going on for at least ten years - I would give anything for peace. If you have any ideas, I would be so grateful.

... OK, Chris, let's see if any of our readers can help, or if they know where help might be available.

My question: What is the point of changing all the paperwork - will they still "see" me if am in a city? How can I change this, or improve it?

... From your brief details, I can't make a recommendation. However, a friend suggests you wear large sunglasses that cover the tops of your cheeks, wear a hat, and either grow or remove facial hair. He thinks these are great ways to defeat facial recognition. Is he correct? I don't know but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try.

Also, I don't know if ALL banks allow direct deposit to an account where the payee isn't on the account, but I've seen a direct deposit form from PAYCHEX (one of the national payroll processing companies) that has a place for the account signatory to sign in the event that the payee is not listed on the depository account. I haven't tried that yet, but it might be a possibility in my near future too, so I will definitely report back here if that works!

My mother has retired recently and wants to deposit her monthly state pension checks into some type of bank account or credit union. However, she does not want to give her SSN due to her ex-partner stalking and harassing her. He used to be a private detective so he knows all of the methods including finding her by tracking her SSN.

Can my mother deposit her state retirement checks into my bank account with only my name on the account? Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

... Check with your bank to make sure there will be no problem with this. Or, if she can cash the checks, she could keep any excess cash in a safe deposit box opened by you, not her.

Perhaps some of the readers will have other suggestions.