Identity Theft

How can you keep someone from stealing your name? Easy. Have a name too big to steal.

When you think about it, it is not really too far fetched. How many truly big things go missing? The United States Navy has not had any of its aircraft carriers stolen. Why? Probably because they are too big to steal. They all are easily over 1,000 feet long: three plus football fields in length. Size counts.

Take the recently deceased Duchess of Alba, an 88 year-old Spanish aristocrat who had more names than a Mayflower moving van has state license plates on it.

Try presenting her full name, Maria del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart de Silva, at the mall with a fake credit card that only carries 20 characters. Can't do it. It's no wonder when she passed away she was reported to be worth $4.4 billion. No one could take it away from her.

She only married three times but the last two were to successively younger men, the first 11 years younger than her, the second, almost 25. Like a pulley, as her age, the weight went up, the other side of the rope went down.  The 'Guinness Book of World of Records' recoded her as a noble with the most titles: 40 plus. If she were to meet the pope, the protocol did not need dictate that she knell. She could ride a horse into Seville Cathedral, presumably with her clothes on.

For us here in the States, she was easily the richest woman we never heard of. Her land and palaces in Spain would seem to out-do Disney. Whether a Spanish language station will do a 'Downton Abbey'-like story of her life now that it is even more out in the open remains to be seen.

For sure, a woman like that didn't have a 'Target' or a Spanish 'Hacienda Depot' credit card. But for those of us who do, it might be better if our names were protected by increased length. As things get more complex, they are harder to duplicate. Think of paper money and counterfeits. Extensive changes have been made to paper money to thwart counterfeiting. The bills are way harder to criminally reproduce now. So then, should our names be harder to reproduce.

On forms these days whether online or on paper, there are usually two address lines to provide a street address that may not be contained on one line. So, there should also be for our names.

There should be a second line where our expanded names go. The free format nature of this field invites so much variability that it would make stealing a name even harder. The cyber-thief has to deal with more characters, and has to get them in the right places.

But, it is always hard to defeat those who are tempted by the financial incentives to duplicate something or be someone else. I'm sure at times there were many people who would have loved to have been considered to be Maria del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart de Silva.

Even if they were only at the mall.

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