My Story
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. Although the details of the following events are specific to me, my story is not unique. I am one of many people who have been affected by the changes in society that have made women vulnerable tracing, tracking, and misidentification.
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.
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—then with speed and momentum, the past misinformation was upon me again.
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 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.
One morning, when the air was light enough to tend flowers and pull weeds, my sense of safety changed. I was focused on pulling out weighty invader trying to blend in with the blooms. Then, I looked up: False information had traveled from an app, through a person—and bent reality enough to disturb the peace in my yard—a disturbance that continued.
Meeting Peace
I removed myself from the situation, and ultimately left my home. Then, I started to process what happened through writing. As I wrote about my experience in this intentionally, un-marketed website (a site that is still in progress and as findable as a spec of dust in the universes), the flat line on my analytics shot up, with traffic focused from the area I left.
From what I can glean, the fact that I walked away in peace is not an easy narrative to digest. And, I would have preferred that my words here remain like tiny specs floating in the atmosphere of the web. But, my thoughts were grounded by something Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in his essay “Live Not by Lies:”
…a personal non-participation lies!
Even if all is covered by lies… let us resist
in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!
(https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies)
My leaving in peace tells a truth no gossip or digital twist can undo. It’s a truth told by my mothers’ delicate ruby-nailed fingers that swept the hair from my teenage face decades ago, as if I were the most precious being in the universe. Those same fingers held a pen to paper—one smooth, looped gesture for each word bearing witness to verity in a simple, cliché greeting card that to this day walks beside me:
Don’t look back
Don’t shed a tear
There is love all around
And rainbows everywhere—she was right.
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.
The Social Story
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. Please share your story: where your understanding lands—your walk along the shore between the dry and damp sand.
Every narrative is shaped by perception
And context, like wind and water
Shape the shoreline
—here’s my edge:
