​​​​​​​​​My story is about old family secrets and new world algorithm’s. It began with a decades old breach I never reported, which eventually cascaded into data broker errors and real life danger. But, it’s also about seeing the ugly side of people when they believed false information about me and still choosing to look for something beautiful in the chaos.

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Before I was twenty-one, someone younger than me, someone I loved, used my original birth certificate to make a driver’s license. I had no idea my failure to make a report would lead to misdirected mail and more than one interaction of being identified as the wrong person or the right person with the wrong history.

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Fortunately, it was a time in which real life behavior mattered more than online errors. As I worked through the confusion, I became strong and self-reliant. The chaos receded, I earned my RN license, worked in the NICU, earned a certification in medical writing and an MA in literature, with the goal of becoming an advocate for new moms—then with speed and momentum, the past misinformation was upon me again.

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A Confluence of Factors

 

The old identity theft didn’t disappear. Years later, after I got married some of the old false information got mixed with both new inaccuracies and real records taken out of context—I was unrecognizable online. At one point, the name of a fictional character in a poem of mine that is published on Google Scholar was mixed in with my personal information. These experiences led me to start looking into how easily misinformation spreads through data brokers. However, I didn’t start seriously researching the issue of false information until I came face-to face with the real-life consequences of hoping for the best instead of taking action. 

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One morning, while I was working in my yard, false information in the hands of someone I barely knew became their excuse to act out. Their resulting behavior, in my opinion, was disturbing enough to distance myself from the situation. So, I left my home, my yard, and my rain washed roses that had just bloomed beneath a rainbow arched over my neighbor’s house. I was sad to leave, but I remembered something my Mom wrote decades ago about gratitude and forgiveness that makes more sense today than ever before:

 

“Don’t look back,

Don’t shed a tear,

There is love all around

And rainbows everywhere”— she was right.

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​My first sign of hope was to discover that I’m part of a larger community: There are individuals and groups across the globe who understand the fundamental need for privacy with regard to information that is not relevant to the public, as well as a fundamental right for accountability related to the accuracy of information that is relevant to the public. And, the more I learn about data brokers, the more clear it is to me that “doing nothing” in regard to the original data breech was not a failure on my part; in fact, pointing a finger at a mere child who made a mistake is exactly what the sketchy data brokers would like me to do—but I’m pointing it right back at them. My story is small compared to people who have been denied housing, jobs, community, and more based on our ever-growing access to a new kind of gossip and scapegoating. My hope is for better: a society that is safe for the next generation of women, a society in which we look out  for each other as the sisters that we all truly are.  Today,  the following words are more relevant than ever:

 

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.
 

                                              ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

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​​​The Social Story

 

My first step in  pushing back was to take action by speaking the truth. And, as this second wave of misinformation recedes, I can see that my responsibility lies not only in asserting what is true about me, but in addressing a larger lie that we can protect ourselves by gathering information about others: Controlling this human tendency to spy and snoop on others rather than be personally responsible is more important today than ever before. AI comes with both the hope for progress and a warning we can’t ignore. Among the more courageous voices calling attention to the issue is Harvard Professor Shoshanna Zuboff (See Shoshanna Zuboff’s latest video here).​​​

 

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Please share your story: the mental space where your understanding lands—you’re walk along the shore between the dry and damp sand.

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