How can even a small-time PI track you down?

Gone are the days of "Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!" If Sherlock Holmes were alive today, he would be sitting at a desk, just like so many other small-time PIs are doing at this very moment.

All your local PI has to do to find your home address is to run whatever data he’s been given, using paid national and international databases, common Internet searches, and social media site searches.

He may make phone calls to your family and friends or to church members if the client has provided that contact information, and he has an ample supply of “pretexts” up his sleeve to track you down in a matter of hours.

As outlined in How to be Invisible, the only way to protect yourself in such a case is to move. Once you do, never give out your home address again. A few close friends and relatives will know it, of course, but caution them against the possibility of a pretext call from a PI. They must either give him false information (“He moved to Alaska but I don’t know where”) or no information at all.