A New Kind of Identity Theft
Welcome to The Internet.
An expansive place where you can meet thousands of new people every minute.
You can browse around for an entire day and never hit the same page twice.
You can copy a picture of someone and say they’re you.
You can research people and their hobbies, and claim to be them.
You can read through the archives of a personal blog, and take on their e-persona.
Oh wait…wouldn’t those last three be identify theft?
Something that could be just as damaging as stealing an actual birth certificate or social security card and using it for your own means?
It’s real in the e-streets.
Just like the internet is an expansive place, remember that is also a NETWORK which makes it a lot smaller than it seems.
Especially when you are trying to steal the identity of a person that’s part of a subculture, like the armed forces, a college, a greek organization.
Just witnessed the e-interrogation of someone perpetrating a few things : being a member of The Army Natio.nal Guard (actually illegal and punishable by law), being married to a member of Kappa Alp.ha Psi (his information could not be verified), and being a member of Alpha Kap.pa Alpha (also could not be verified).
They really went in on her!
Kapp.a’s and K’s alike!
I felt bad to tell you the truth.
For me, perps don’t bother me so much as I don’t personally encounter them. I used to be active in the e-streets of greekdom, but even then I didn’t participate in the outing of perps.
Generally though, I do have a problem with non-discrete people, whether they have letters or not. Being an Ultra (XYZ) is permissible only during your time as a Neo, otherwise it raises a lot of flags of “did you join to serve the org or to serve yourself”?
Perps of any org usually out themselves with excessive posting of clip art or, having names like Jane “My Ivy is Fierce” Doe, or friending a huge amount of members that are not directly associated with their own org, not friending any of their fellow members. (This girl claimed A.rmy Na.tional Guard and AKA, had no other people claiming ARN.G or AKA’s..and tons of clip art of everything…all telltale signs).
It’s real in the e-streets.
She made a few comments that drew people’s attention and they went through her profile verifying her identity. Sending her name to people in the organizations she claimed. Looked her up in directories…looking up the person she claimed to be married to…all turning up empty.
They then pulled her into a conversation, presented evidence they found, and intimidated her into removing her profile from Face.book.
It’s real in the e-streets.
While I think the mob mentality doesn’t do a lot to differentiate ourselves from GANGS, it’s also a little crazy to perp anything really, but especially a Greek organization.
1. It would be like perping Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts…like “Yeah boyee, I’m troop #7119! Bluebonnet brownie council hoe!” (Shouts out to my now defunct troop! *Girl scout tear).
2. On another level, it’s really hard to perp something that requires you to know a lot of people to be in it in the first place. Depending on where you pledge, you have to do A LOT to be taken seriously. People have to know you, and vouch for you. Even on lines where there are like 938 people (lol) you are STILL documented in many different places.
3. For the above reason, people are EXTRA sensitive about people claiming to be members of the orgs knowing all of the real work that’s required to get in and be active. The armed forces especially aren’t a walk in the park. It’s so disrespectful to claim to be a member of something you have absolutely no idea about.
So yeah, it’s a new day. The internet is an interesting place. Sure there may be billions if not trillions of pages, but in reality they’re connected by like 3 main sites : Google, Facebook, Twitter.
Really one degree of separation.
Be smart.
