October 11, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Data Farming
October 13, 2008 at 2:12 am
Unfortunately for me (or is it) as far as I can tell I am the one and only person in the world with the name Shaun McGuile. 😀
So I'm not likely to lose any data to anyone with the same name.
Getting people to believe my surname is McGuile and not Mcguile ( a USA corruption) or McGuire is entirely a different matter.
Like the one time I was told by the department of social security that my invalidity benefit cheque would be in the post as they believed I was wheelchair bound - due to the data entry clerk typing an 'r' instead of an 'l' between the i and e in my surname.
I have never been in a wheelchair nor even had a broken bone in my life 😉
I get bills and correspondence address to Mr McGuire on a regular basis.
Hiding under a desk from SSIS Implemenation Work :crazy:
October 13, 2008 at 2:21 am
When it comes to bad data, I've signed up for a few things in my time, entering name/address etc. It amazes me that even though I'd written my surname clearly, (or so I thought), two companies still managed to miss spell it. "Aaines" and "Maines", instead of it beginning with 'h'. If this is quality control used for normal data-entry, then no wonder we get orphaned records, miss-addressed cheques for disability...
At least for me, I know what they're supposed to say and know I can still open the post I receive.
As for telling the companies their mistake, at the moment it's not worth the hassle. Plus, it makes it harder to track me if ID thiefs are trying to match wrongly spelled surnames!
Paul
October 13, 2008 at 4:41 am
I would be willing to say that there might be such a scenario in the works somewhere in the world; but I question whether those who perform such dastardly deeds are willing to wait 25 years to develop such pseudo-beings. It is way too easy these days to steal an existing identity through social engineering, hacking into poorly secured databases, or stealing that laptop, thumb drive or document that is just laying about and glean the benefits of a mature identity immediately.
October 13, 2008 at 6:57 am
These are some fascinating ideas.
Two thoughts:
1) Although it may be hard in "first world" countries to fake an identity nowadays, there are many countries where the record keeping is not as sophisticated, and where it's much easier to bribe officials if you want to bypass whatever record keeping is in place. Someone with a little patience could create (or steal) hundreds of legitimate looking identities...
2) Once again, you can have all the procedures you want to do something, but they have to be followed to be effective. One of the strange statistics of the recent mortgage meltdown is the charge that large number of sub-prime mortgages were awarded to people who were in the U.S. illegally - many of whom either used fake IDs or in some cases were not asked for standard forms of identification. Go figure...
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October 13, 2008 at 7:10 am
I can't imagine going through this much effort to create a fake identity when, in fact, the FBI says that stealing an actual identity is usually just a question of taking stuff out of someone's mail box.
Per the latest statistics I read, something like 80% of "identity theft" is children using their parents' IDs, and 80% of the rest of identity theft is done by stealing mail out of mail boxes. (Yes, the first number isn't mentioned by the media when they report on the alarming amounts of ID theft going on. It's not scary enough to sell papers/magazines/advertising air-time.)
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
October 13, 2008 at 7:21 am
Those numbers are likely falling. Given the recent banking issues, seems like we're getting less and less bank offers in the mail every day. Less stuff to steal.
October 13, 2008 at 8:18 am
Bad data happens...
WHen I got my US Passport my last name was spelled wrong. THis with the name taken right off my naturalization papers, which has it right. Luckily the government office that issues passports has good proecdures in place for fixing it, but it also means that my passport has my name wrong in it, with an ammended name in the back, until I replace it in 5 years.
October 13, 2008 at 8:26 am
I had a similar data shadow problem a few years ago, when my husband and I were turned for a bank load due to the activites of another couple in the same town - - and the wife's name wasn't even the same as mine! Very sloppy work on the side of the bank employee, but what if it had been something much more important, like a criminal record.
October 13, 2008 at 8:29 am
Wasn't there the old two driving licence trick being worked by the Hell's Angels in the States.....
When they got arrested or fined they'd use one for ID purposes....
Then when they needed a clean ID for any purpose they'd use the other one....
Hiding under a desk from SSIS Implemenation Work :crazy:
October 13, 2008 at 11:07 am
Yes Steve, Life is not fair when it comes to data farming. I do try to limit my data shadow, but I prefer to use the term data wake since it is the rippling waves left behind by my passing, which does diminish the further away I get from it.
I kind've taken the fatalistic attitude that helped me cope with the anxieties of living through the cold war. Yes the M.A.D. doctrine could still end the world as we know it, and yes someone stealing my identity could do the same. However in the geologic record of time, all this nonsense won't amount to more than a quarter inch of history in the folded convoluted rock that we will all will eventually become.
My advice is prepare as best as you can for disaster, but enjoy what you do and live your life now, not in the future. If the shit ever does hit the fan, relax, look around, smell the roses and either start over or lay down and die.
Brandon Forest
October 13, 2008 at 11:20 am
Carla's comment is accurate. I was recently stopped for speeding. After checking my record through his on board computers, and talking to me, he did not give me a ticket. Then he helpfully casually mentioned that there was a criminal with my first and last name with an outstanding warrant for arrest who he could tell was not me personally. His point was, in case I was mistakenly taken as that person, that I could mention this to other policemen and maybe circumvent a false arrest.
I have a super common first, middle and last name. scary - nothing I can do.
October 13, 2008 at 3:07 pm
With the whole, "same name as thousands of others" thing going, I've actually wondered recently if the celebrity thing of truly odd names for their kids might be more of a blessing than a curse. Sure, you'll have trouble in middle school with some of those names - kids can be quite cruel. But when it comes to being mistaken for someone else because of a name on a watch-list, or some such, it sure won't be as easy as for "Steve Jones".
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
October 13, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Several decades ago, I dropped the "R" in my name: "R. Barry Young". It just made things harder, forms couldn't handle it, clerks kept identifying my as "Barry R. Young" and government officials kept insisting that I give them my real first name. So I just dropped it, never to be used again. This was possible before 9-11 and pre-digital IDs by the simple expedient of never using it again.
Then came the internet, especially Google, and I noticed an annoying thing: despite having worked my entire adult life in computers, and despite having been on the internet almost as long as it has existed, I couldn't find me. "Barry Young" is neither common nor rare, but there are at least 5 Barry Young's on the internet easier to find than me (way easier). I didn't show up until around page 12, if then.
And if I couldn't find me, then I knew that no one else could either. And this had other effects: Like that question to a difficult problem that I posted in some obscure forum and got that great answer to about 5 years ago? I couldn't find it or any of my other posts & replies.
Then there's the username problem: Unlike many, I think that adults should use their real names on the internet (or something close to it), and I have never liked names like BYoung573. I would never be able to remember what it was later on (I have registered on hundreds, maybe thousands of sites) and unlike a forgotten password, a forgotten username is usually a much bigger problem.
And by the mid to late-90's I began notice something really annoying: I couldn't get BarryYoung as my username when I registered for new sites anymore, it was always taken. Grrrr...
So I resurrected the "R" and I always use it. In 10 years I have only ever been denied this username once (and that may have been an earlier registration by myself). Even better, whenever I want to see any of my posts, blog replies, rants against Ezines articles, etc. all I had to do was Google RBarryYoung: 100% hit efficiency!
Of course now everyone else can do it too, but that's never really bothered me too much. 😀
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October 14, 2008 at 5:22 am
My name, like Shaun's, is towards the other end of the rarity spectrum from Steve Jones, so if I google for it, most of the entries on the first 5 pages are mine (a couple refer to my father). In fact, if I search for my surname most of the entries are about fairly close relatives (there are a handfull relating to people called "Don Gray"). My brother prepared a family tree a few years ago which showed that there were actually only 324 people he could find in the world with the surname Dongray and they were all closely related. Hence I'm fairly certain that my name in unique.
I don't know how this affects the chance of identity theft, since my data shadow can clearly be linked to me. As an example, I recently joined Facebook; within 2 days, someone I hadn't been in touch with for a couple of years contacted me and after a couple of weeks, someone I was at school with over 30 years ago linked me as a 'friend'. This indicates the double-edged nature of having a rare name; when people see it, they assume it's me, which is good if it is, but could be disastrous if my identity ever gets stolen.
What action do I take to limit my 'shadow'? Very little, except to maintain links to many of my past email addresses and try to minimise change to either my email address or phone number (I've kept the same mobile/cell number for 11 year and use an email address linked to a domain registered to me over 5 years ago). I do have an alternate "nickname" I use on many sites, but even there I tend to maintain the same name so that, if someone wanted to, they could easily link it to me.
Obviously, I only sign up for accounts I actually want (whether bank, credit card, book club membership or forum discussion) since these tend to persist for years, and also only fill in the minimum information they require; for example, on this site, I have no contact information (apart from the registration email), no personal info, no signature, no avatar and no photo, since none of this is needed for my discussions of SQL. Of course, a little searching would probably get most of my personal info off the net, but there's no point broadcasting it!
Does any of this do any good?
All I can say is I haven't had my identity stolen ... yet! 🙂 My feeling (hope?) is that if someone wanted to steal an identity they'd choose a name that was more common to avoid the possibility of being found out too quickly. When your name's Steve Jones, people will say "I knew a Steve Jones when I was at school"; when your name's Derek Dongray they say "I was at XYZ school at the same time as you in 19xx"!
Derek
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