Keep your personal phone number and home address off your business listings

A freelancer or one-person LLC usually starts with the phone and address they already have. Within a year they are on the website's contact page, every invoice, the state's business entity search, domain records, review sites and a Google listing. People-search sites and marketing lists collect them from there. That is how scam calls, fake "annual report due" letters and unhappy customers find you at home.

Your mobile number has a security cost too. It is often the recovery number for your email and bank, so publishing it everywhere makes you an easier target for SIM-swap attacks and for impersonation calls that use your business name to sound legitimate.

The cheapest fix is a free Google Voice number for personal accounts. It rings your existing phone and keeps your real number private. It suits a solo owner who takes a few calls a week.

A paid virtual number service makes sense when you want a toll-free or vanity number, call routing to more than one person, business hours and a voicemail greeting that sounds like a company. Services like 800.com give you local, toll-free or vanity numbers that forward to the phone you already carry.

For invoices, your website footer, marketing email footers (which must show a valid postal address under the CAN-SPAM Act) and supplier accounts, you have three main options:

• A USPS post office box. Cheap and reliable, but many carriers will not deliver packages to one, and some forms do not accept a P.O. box.
• A virtual mailbox. A street address at a mail center that receives your mail and packages and scans the envelopes to an app. Anytime Mailbox is one network of such locations. USPS treats these as commercial mail receiving agencies, so you will complete USPS Form 1583 and show two forms of ID, one with a photo (USPS).
• A coworking or shared office if you already rent one.

Every LLC and corporation must name a registered agent with a physical street address in the state, and that address is public in the state's business search. Owners who list themselves at home put their home address on the public record. A registered agent service gives the state a commercial address instead and receives legal papers for you.

Formation services such as Bizee include registered agent service. Two honest limits: a P.O. box cannot be a registered agent address, and some states publish the names and addresses of members, managers or officers on formation documents or annual reports whatever agent you use. Read your state's filing instructions on the secretary of state's site before you file, and use a non-home address in any field that allows one.

Google's rules trip up home-based owners. Google says a business that does not serve customers at its address should remove the address from its profile and list a service area instead (Google). It also says P.O. boxes are not permitted and a rented mailing address where you do not operate (a virtual office) is not eligible (Google guidelines). So for Google, the private option is a service-area profile that verifies at your real address but does not display it, not a virtual mailbox.

1. Replace your personal number and address on your website, invoice templates and email signatures.
2. Update the address on your domain registration and turn on the registrar's privacy option.
3. File an amendment or change of agent with your state if your home is on the record.
4. Remove yourself from people-search sites. Our data broker removal guide covers the free opt-outs.

Old filings usually stay in the state's records even after you change them, so this reduces exposure going forward rather than erasing the past.