Data Personified
How Fraud Is Transforming the Meaning of Identity
by
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“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me. I promise it’s not illegal. Can I try to get a copy of your birth certificate?”
She pauses. “Uh, I guess? What are you going to do with it?”
This is the conversation I had with my best friend the day I asked if I could steal her identity. We have known each other our whole lives, so it probably didn’t come as too much of a surprise. She did, however, ask the right question: what are you going to do with it?
This question is central to fraud in any form. A birth or death certificate on its own is harmless. The problem with documents is what they allow you to do, how they enable action. In many cases, possessing someone else’s personal information is perfectly legal. It’s normal within genealogy and ancestry studies to have other people’s birth certificates lying around. Even some sports teams keep them on file. It only becomes illegal when you abuse those documents.
Our research began with a single hypothesis: it is easy to order certified birth certificates online without proving your identity. Turns out, this is true. We were shocked by how simple the process is. We spoke with CEOs of large identity information corporations, FBI officials, and government employees, none of whom were aware that an average person has the ability to order certificates containing the personal information of total strangers. Curiosity got the best of us, and we began ordering them in droves. After a few months, we had almost 30 birth certificates, none of which were our own.
We figured we would only be able to order birth certificates from what are called ‘open states,’ states that view birth certificates as public record, and allow anyone to order anyone else’s, as long as they can provide the minimally-required, but necessary, information. This is how we ended up with Steven Spielberg’s birth certificate—but I’m getting ahead of myself.
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About the Book
From the authors who brought you WTF: Where’s the Fraud? comes Data Personified, an in-depth and current look at the evolution of fraudulent tactics. With a focus on business identity theft and document fraud, Data Personified unwraps the complicated issues of identity theft and data breaches—without boring readers to death.
Documents are the building blocks of identities, and how those identities interact proves just how malleable they are. Businesses have identities too, and are just as vulnerable as individuals. From ordering celebrity birth certificates to analyzing fraudulent fraud statistics, Larry and Alana Benson explore new crimes, and explain why they matter to anyone with a Social Security number. With a different data breach every week, and identity theft a click away, Data Personified could not be more timely.
About the Author
Larry Benson is the Director of Strategic Alliances for the Government Tax and Revenue vertical at LexisNexis Risk Solutions where he focuses on embedded companies that have a need for third-party analytics. As principal author of the Fraud of the Day column, he provides commentary on fraud against federal, state, and local government agencies, and has garnered a following as a national speaker on the topic.
Alana Benson is a researcher, writer, and consultant specializing in document fraud. She has presented her research to industry thought leaders such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Fraud Defense Network, and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. She previously wrote for LexisNexis’s daily fraud column, Fraud of the Day, and has written four other titles with Rosen Publishing.