Ok, my temporary fix is:

1)turn off all extra boxes at the PHP level so nobody will be offered extra stuff to buy (the bad news is that I am turning them off after learning that they really DO boost sales/downloads - )

2)change the category IDs on every hidden category so the google cached pages give only a 'this product was not found'

3) linked the sticky notes in the private PHPBB areas to the new categories

have I missed something which would keep my 'stuff' hidden until I can do a rework of the whole thing?
:-)

Lori