IS THERE ANOTHER ME?

Published in slightly different form in Tomorrowsf (http://www.tomorrowsf.com), No. 15 (May-June 1999).

Serendipity can be a strange and fearsome thing.

On April 21, 1999, I received from a stranger an email that began, "Ok, Tom, this time you're wrong...."

Now this didn't alarm me too much, for as a book reviewer I do get such messages from time to time. But the rest of the message made it clear that this had nothing to do with my misguided opinions about some book. Indeed, it didn't have anything to do with me!

When I studied the headers, I soon realized that there was another Tom Easton out there in email land. He's also a writer--he works for a major magazine--and his email address (addy) is teaston@.com. My own addy is teaston@.net. I don't know him, nor the colleague who was writing to him. My name and addy are not in their address books, and since I've never had anything to do with the magazine he works for, my addy shouldn't be anywhere in the computers that process his email. Yet email addressed to him wound up coming to me.

I'm still pretty baffled. All I can figure is that the ghods of cyberspace figured one teaston was as good as another and didn't read the addy past the @ sign. It wouldn't be the first time those ghods had nodded, for the other Tom Easton told me that some years ago, American Express switched bills between him and still another Tom Easton, who fortunately kept very good records and was able to straighten the confusion out.

Or perhaps those ghods had been hanging around Washington and seen the announcements for the hearing on "Identity Theft: Is There Another You?" to be held on April 22 (day 2 of the sequence above) by the Subcommittee on Telecommunications Trade & Consumer Protection and Subcommittee on Finance & Hazardous Materials of the House of Representatives' Commerce Committee.

The coincidence seemed a bit much, but at least it offered a good excuse for a column. There certainly seemed to be another me out there, and I had heard of other writers whose lives had been complicated by sharing a name with someone else. A few have actually had to change their working names or adopt pen names because their "other" started writing first, sometimes even in the same genre.

Even names that are not identical, but only similar, can create awkwardness. Jeff Hecht is a science writer for New Scientist and the author of several excellent books on fiber optics and lasers. He tells of "Eugene Hecht, a professor at Adelphi University, who wrote a widely used (and very good) upper-level undergraduate text called Optics. He coauthored the first edition with another professor named Zajack, but the second edition which came out in 1988 was simply: Hecht: Optics (third edition, 1997). That very same year, my young-adult book Optics: Light for a New Age, was published by Scribners. The widespread shorthand of just using the author's last name created two "Hecht: Optics" books. The most confusing part came when I found a German edition of Hecht: Optics .... Needless to say, I was a bit concerned when I discovered a German edition I'd never heard of."

The Congressional hearing, according to the Honorable W. J. "Billy" Tauzin, was not on such confusions but "on identity theft - how it occurs, whether anti-fraud laws are being enforced, and what we can do to help innocent people clean up their credit records after they have been victimized by an identity theft criminal.

"While we are sitting here today, each one of us might unknowingly be the victim of identity theft. Some person might be searching through our mailbox or hacking our consumer accounts over the Internet to obtain our names, addresses, and social security numbers. The thief will then use that information to open up lines of credit and go on a spending spree, all under someone else's identity.

"As victims, we might not find out about this identity theft until several months later when the collection agencies start calling and we get turned down for a mortgage or credit loan."

This clearly is not what happened to me. No one stole my identity, no one swiped my credit card numbers, no one messed up my credit record. No one committed bigamy, molested children, broke traffic laws, or incurred court fines in my name (such things can happen too!). There's just another Tom Easton out there, and a stray cyberspace electron mixed us up.

But identity theft does happen. The hearing witnesses had some frightening stories to tell. For instance, Robert Anderson of Mineral, Virginia, discovered that he could not refinance his mortgage because an identity thief in California had used his social security number to obtain credit and run up bills at department stores and hospitals. The dunning phone calls came to Mr. Anderson, and only some of the creditors paid any attention to his evidence of fraud. The police, FBI, and Social Security Administration were little help. "Five years later," Mr. Tauzin reminds us, "Mr. Anderson is still trying to get his name cleared and his identity back."

The actual financial damage is the least of the harm done. You're insured against losses due to credit card loss or fraud after the first fifty bucks. But the black marks on your record can remain for years no matter how many times you explain what happened and no matter what proof you can offer.

Ironically, even people in the credit industry can be victims of identity theft. Charles A. Albright, Chief Credit Officer of Household International, Inc., found that "unbeknownst to me, someone fraudulently obtained my personal information, including my social security number, and then proceeded to open several credit card and retail credit accounts in my name. The perpetrator had my address changed to a location in Philadelphia, PA, for these accounts so I received no statements or other information about the accounts. After opening these fraudulent accounts, the perpetrator proceeded to incur debts in the tens of thousands of dollars."

Identity theft seems to be astonishingly common. Author and ex-victim Mari Frank says it affects approximately 500,000 people per year! It's "an absolute epidemic," says Robert Ellis Smith.

According to Jodie Bernstein, Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection, it "occurs when someone uses the identifying information of another person--name, social security number, mother's maiden name, or other personal information--to commit fraud or engage in other unlawful activities. For example, an identity thief may open up a new credit card account under someone else's name. When the identity thief fails to pay the bills, the bad debt is reported on the victim's credit report. Other common forms of identity theft include taking over an existing credit card account and making unauthorized charges on it (typically, the identity thief forestalls discovery by the victims by contacting the credit card issuer and changing the billing address on the account); taking out loans in another person's name; writing fraudulent checks using another person's name and/or account number; and using personal information to access, and transfer money out of, another person's bank or brokerage account. In extreme cases, the identity thief may completely take over his or her victim's identity--opening a bank account, getting multiple credit cards, buying a car, getting a home mortgage and even working under the victim's name."

The necessary personal information is surprisingly easy to obtain. For instance, boxes of new checks can be swiped from the mail and discarded bank account statements can be sifted from one's trash. Or you can just subscribe to the "spymaster" Internet site. Bernstein tells us that "In one recent scheme, fraud artists have reportedly been preying on consumers' fears about Year 2000 computer bugs; a caller, for example, represents that he or she is from the consumer's bank and tells the consumer that the caller needs certain information about the consumer's account (or needs to transfer money to a special account) in order to ensure the bank can comply with Year 2000 requirements." In addition, there is an astonishing amount of personal information available on the Internet--and you may well have received email pitches for books that tell you how to find it!

Concern over the problem has led to "the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act of 1998.... The Act addresses identity theft in two significant ways. First, the Act strengthens the criminal laws governing identity theft. Specifically, the Act amends 18 U.S.C. 1028 ... to make it a federal crime to: 'knowingly transfer or use, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of Federal law, or that constitutes a felony under any applicable State or local law.'"

This Act also "addresses the problem of identity theft ... by improving assistance to victims. In particular, the Act provides for a centralized complaint and consumer education service for victims of identity theft, and gives the responsibility of developing this service to the Federal Trade Commission. The Act directs that the Commission establish procedures to: (1) log the receipt of complaints by victims of identity theft; (2) provide identity theft victims with informational materials; and (3) refer complaints to appropriate entities, including the major national consumer reporting agencies and law enforcement agencies." A toll-free telephone number and a complaint data base are planned; neither is yet available.

There has been some call to restrict access to the kind of information that makes identity theft possible, but spokespersons such as D. Barry Connelly, President of Associated Credit Bureaus, Inc., insist that the industry is taking significant steps toward dealing with the problem, including better provisions for people to correct errors in their records. He adds that, "Information is a key economic growth factor in this country. Laws that limit information are most likely to merely take fraud prevention tools out of the hands of legitimate industry. Ironically, to prevent fraud you must be able to crosscheck information. Absent this authentication of identifying information, we will be less able to prevent the very crime we are discussing here today."

There is no shortage of information about identity theft. All you need to do is search on "identity theft," and you will have dozens of case histories, cries of alarm, and offers to sell you "identity theft survival" kits. And the problem is a real one. With personal information so easily available--much of it for free, and much more to anyone willing to pay for access to credit bureau and other databases--and sharpies so numerous, it's not even any real wonder.

But what I find most interesting about it is the idea that our personal information--phone numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and all the rest--somehow is our identity! Granted, these data are important to our functioning in society. Granted, by arrogating them an evildoer can seriously interfere with our lives.

But I am not my numbers. I am not my dossier.

To insist that I am--and to label fraudulent access to my assets as "identity theft" is precisely to do that--is to create the Kafkaesque crime of the bureaucratic tyranny that believes it can make you a nonperson by confiscating your "identity papers."

What? You say such papers are better known as "identification papers"? Perhaps that is more to the point. "Identity theft" can't steal your identity. It can only steal the markers that say who you are, that identify you to others.

To those who are secure in their sense of self, that is no threat to anything other than their pocketbook. To those who are less secure, it seems a threat to the very fundament of being.

And if the ghods of cyberspace can nod and grow confused over people who happen to share similar markers, ... Well, I know perfectly well that I'm this Tom Easton, right here at this keyboard. He's that Tom Easton, different keyboard, different city, different state.

And if we ever meet, I'm sure we'll grin foolishly at each other. After all, we're both Tom Easton.


Dr. Thomas A. Easton is Professor of Life Sciences at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine. He has been the Analog book columnist for the last twenty years. His latest novel, Unto the Last Generation, is available only on-line, from Mind's Eye Fiction. Silicon Karma (White Wolf, 1997) was well received; copies are now available from the author. His latest nonfiction books are Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Science, Technology, and Society (Dushkin Publishing Group, 1995, 2nd ed., 1997, 3rd ed., 1998) and Periodic Stars: An Overview of Recent Science Fiction (Borgo Books, 1997).

Previous columns are available here.