Beware identity fraud. Photo: pexels.com
It’s increasingly common to have the violating experience of someone stealing or misappropriating your identity. Loopholes in modern technology, plus glitches within systems, necessitate us being alert to our identity being stolen, cloned or mistakenly attributed to someone else.
Murray Smith
In the course of pastoral ministry, I’ve visited people in prisons. Meticulously observing protocols implemented by Corrections for gaining approval to visit inmates is essential. One day, reporting at a particular prison’s entry gates, I was stopped.
To my astonishment, I was prevented from entering. Regardless of having a pre-approved appointment, an officer told me matter-of-factly, “You’re barred from further visits due to dishonesty about your criminal record”. I protested – I have no criminal conviction.
My request for further explanation went unheeded as I was unceremoniously instructed to turn around, return home and obtain a print-out of my “undeclared crimes” from our police station.
Feeling peeved and frustrated over wasting a chunk of time, later that day I presented my driver’s license at the station to establish proof of my unblemished record. To my horror I received a printout connecting my identity to a criminal charge for ‘drunk driving’ prosecuted in the Whangarei Court in 1984. A police record dating back almost three decades had been ‘mis-attributed’ to my identity. Personal details – date of birth, place of residence, eye colour were all accurate but somehow, I’d been falsely implicated in someone else’s arrest, which had resulted in a conviction and six months driving disqualification.
Legal steps were initiated to remove this charge that had appeared. But getting it ‘expunged’ was very complex. It didn’t help that 25 different “Murray Smiths” were prosecuted in Whangarei Court throughout 1984. In addition, police headquarters in Wellington no longer held files to identify the real culprit… No physical description, fingerprints, nothing. Being able to demonstrate I was overseas at the time the offence occurred helped, since nothing existed to distance me from the charge.
It was surmised that when New Zealand’s controversial centralised electronic database, The National Law Enforcement Database was closing down in 2005, during manual transfer of data, human error attributed another ‘Murray Smith’s’ misdemeanour erroneously to my identity.
Signed affidavits eventually secured an ambivalent response from police who acknowledged a ‘mistake happened’ with agreement to pay my legal expenses.
Although distressing, my experience helps underscore the need for vigilance in protecting your personal information and identity from any form of misappropriation. It highlights the even greater need for hyper-vigilance in the face of infinitely worse ‘identity theft’ imposed by a malevolent, sinister entity hell-bent on perverting and trashing our dignity and well-being.
Many scoff at the suggestion of ‘a devil’ and his cohorts being behind all evil in our world – nonetheless, in total opposition to God, this evil one lays siege to people, the objects of God’s love, attacking their identity and personhood, undermining their innate value. With satanic deceit, he’s ‘slimed’ multitudes with lies they’ve believed, causing pain and destruction.
Be vigilant. Live as one set free – not as harassed victims.
Photo: Nikita Belokhonov. pexels.com
