Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How does one create a fake identity?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 117 posts

Re: Ask HN: How does one create a fake identity?

#101

Post by ewbuoi »

timbre wrote: post #24
gregw134 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come off it--he's just using quotation marks to emphasize sarcasm.

It is frustrating that quotation marks have come to have two, almost perfectly opposite meanings (the traditional "words someone actually said" and the new "words no one actually said"). I guess the battle against the new usage is lost though.

People have always used air quotes to show they're quoting someone's exact words, and also when they're being sarcastic and making up a quote. It's just hard to tell when people are being sarcastic in text.

Re: Ask HN: How does one create a fake identity?

#102

Post by Ovid »

medde wrote: post #76
Ovid wrote: post #23

Source: a long time ago I read several books on this topic because I collected odd books and I found three of them in an estate sale. The instructions below are how this was done in the early 90's and earlier, but today, with increased security and faster records access, the information is probably well out of date. Traditionally, the best way to do this has always been to establish a solid "breeder document". This i…

Can't you just use any legit SSN?

Depends on whether or not the states check it for validity and my knowledge is so out of date that I can't say if they do.

You'd have to avoid any SSN which exists in an illegal range and you'd want the first three numbers to be consistent with where you claim to have applied for the SSN (usually the state where you were born - fewer questions). See also: http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/425/~/de... and http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/topic/resources/basic/ssn.htm...

Re: Ask HN: How does one create a fake identity?

#103

Post by triplesec »

charlus wrote: post #49
timbre wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is frustrating that quotation marks have come to have two, almost perfectly opposite meanings (the traditional "words someone actually said" and the new "words no one actually said"). I guess the battle against the new usage is lost though.

I think it's interesting - Proust talks about this, an intonation to show detachment. As he spoke I noticed, what had often struck me before in his conversations with my grandmother’s sisters, that whenever he spoke of serious matters, whenever he used an expression which seemed to imply a definite opinion upon some important subject, he would take care to isolate, to sterilise it by using a special intonation, mecha…

V interesting. I found the reference (please add next time, it's useful) here, and fortunately it was that easy to find: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8g8rAEkl5-UC&lpg=PA92&ots...

Re: Ask HN: How does one create a fake identity?

#104

Post by triplesec »

driverdan wrote: post #86
onetimeonly wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually my biggest lesson about identity theft is that most people just don't need to worry. The negative effect of identity theft in 9999/1000 cases is just the inconvenience of correcting the mistakes by informing various institutions about it. In the last 5 years or so, banks have got very good at clearing up the mess fast. You need to assess the risk, taking into account the very low probability of having your i…

This isn't true at all. You generally don't have to worry about credit card theft, you're not liable. ID theft is completely different. If someone steals your ID and drains your bank account it's going to be much harder and more time consuming to get your money back. If someone opens credit cards under your ID it will be easier to correct than losing your bank account but can still be very time consuming. Often peopl…

I had a friend who was id hacked. not nice, and citibank was really bad at helping him. Don't expect them to be on your side, any of the big nasties.

and don't put your damn personal information on facebook!

Re: Ask HN: How does one create a fake identity?

#105

Post by triplesec »

gknoy wrote: post #32
MWil wrote: post #15

The first thing to do is realize that there are only a few limited situations in which you are ever legally obligated to tell the truth (or to say anything at all). Allow that to empower you and the truth will literally set you free. Truthfully, you are almost always free to lie. Find those boundaries and tiptoe without crossing them. I imagine that even if you are able to take advantage of some of the other advice i…

Note that lying to a federal investigator, even when you don't even realize it or realize that it has any bearing on anything, is a crime (in the US). It's inadvisable to lie to the police, FBI, etc.

which is why you never talk to the police, or the Feds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc Can't post this often enough, because it takes a lawyer to explain that even if you're "innocent" (scare quotes, ha ha), you're in danger

Re: Ask HN: How does one create a fake identity?

#106

Post by cskau »

olefoo wrote: post #42

On top of all the other steps, you'll want to get cosmetic surgery to alter your face to match the new identity. In the US at least the FBI has a program in collaboration with every state DMV to perform facial recognition on drivers licenses applications. This has been used to catch people who tried to generate fake identities to escape sex-offender registration for instance. [1] If your new identity is going to be v…

I imagine you can get away with a lot by simply using a new photo each time. Facial recognition is still far from perfect, while matching two instances of the same photo is trivial.

Re: Ask HN: How does one create a fake identity?

#107

Post by kimble »

socceroos wrote: post #96
onetimeonly wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a large sample size of the people I worked with over 8 years. Seriously, everyone went down eventually.

Your username of 'one time only', is that a reflection on the proper use of an OTP? Is there a story there about a mistake? Just curious. =)

Well you know, we all make mistakes.

There is nobody who likes to be woken by a dawn-raid!

Old-school hackers still like proper handles rather than random strings for usernames, even for one time posts.

The devil is in the details.

Re: Ask HN: How does one create a fake identity?

#108

Post by VLM »

rdtsc wrote: post #97
VLM wrote: post #61

Why do you need "a" identity as in singular, why can't you have multiple identities, and it seems easier to adjust your lifestyle to require minimal identification rather than to get "a" new identity. You can go to immense efforts to subscribe to 2600 magazine without the bank or the mailman or the FBI knowing who you really are. That's all very impressive in a way. But for the overall system, it turns out to be a he…

I think in light of what we found out (or some who already knew) about our government's monitoring patterns, going out of ones way not be noticed is ... what will make you be noticed. Over time defaults change. It used to be for example, that having a some silly Facebook account was a new and interesting thing, now not having one is perhaps odd. Buying a car in cash was strange perhaps, you know walking in with a duf…

I think by "change how you use identity" I mean a lifestyle change not a minor procedure change.

As per your example, most people with no identity issues tend to walk into the car dealer and buy a car with a loan and the dealer runs a credit check on them before they even get to test drive (happened to me...). I agree, walking in with a duffel bag of cash is not going to work.

On the other hand, why not buy a "decent" project car for cash from a private citizen, then spend cash at car shops upgrading it to a quite nice hot rod?

Or the meta question of, why buy a car? If a decent fake ID is so expensive, and the cost of detection is so high, why not just pay a cabbie or live in NYC and not own a car?

The startup lesson here, if any, is optimize the big picture, then once that is done, work on optimizing the little picture stuff.

If the cost, both financial and risk, of having a car while remaining private is very high, then don't have a car.

On the other hand, as far as I know, fake profiles on facebook are no big deal, just put enough up not to be suspiciously empty. One important datapoint is I'm not operating under a fake ID, and I had a FB account years and years ago back when it was new and just opened to the public, it was a total waste of time, so after awhile I deleted it, and absolutely no one cares. Its right up there with being one of those guys who doesn't own a TV and tells everyone about it all the time. So a guy operating under a fake identity has at least one anecdote that at least one guy with a real identity found not having a FB account to be completely totally unimportant to modern living.

People who discuss living outside the identity system never seem to mention our explosively growing illegal population. This stuff has all been figured out, if you're willing to learn spanish and be friendly. If a hispanic looking dude can get away with calling himself an illegal, and everything turns out OK, then I can probably call myself a German illegal, or whatever. Germans have pretty good records and might cooperate with the locals... How about my becoming a south african illegal? That would probably work.

Re: Ask HN: How does one create a fake identity?

#109

Post by onetimeonly »

driverdan wrote: post #86
onetimeonly wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually my biggest lesson about identity theft is that most people just don't need to worry. The negative effect of identity theft in 9999/1000 cases is just the inconvenience of correcting the mistakes by informing various institutions about it. In the last 5 years or so, banks have got very good at clearing up the mess fast. You need to assess the risk, taking into account the very low probability of having your i…

This isn't true at all. You generally don't have to worry about credit card theft, you're not liable. ID theft is completely different. If someone steals your ID and drains your bank account it's going to be much harder and more time consuming to get your money back. If someone opens credit cards under your ID it will be easier to correct than losing your bank account but can still be very time consuming. Often peopl…

Well, I just disagree. My experience is that recovering your bank account after fraud is trivial. Fixing fraudulently obtained credit takes longer, but basically just involves going through a formal process with credit reference agencies and lenders. If you want to protect against this, you can get a credit record protection service from any of the major credit agencies, where they alert you if there is any activity on your credit record s you can fix it.

edit: nobody should be so unaware of their own credit record that they lose a house sale because of undiscovered fraud. Keeping on top of it is very cheap and as simple as registering on a website (UK example: https://www.creditexpert.co.uk)

Re: Ask HN: How does one create a fake identity?

#110

Post by onetimeonly »

majelix wrote: post #74
onetimeonly wrote: post #28

Source: at 17 I was running a black-hat hacker collective and had, through a series of bad choices, got pretty deep into the 'real-world' side of that business: fraud. The day after my 19th birthday my house was raided by the US Secret Service and the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency in a worldwide coordinated swoop that took in dozens of loosely affiliated people. I have since completely rebuilt my life, so I don't…

> Sadly, making driving licenses is not too hard The hard part, I imagine, is testing that's a good-enough fake. Standing in front of the passport agent or getting pulled over are probably the worst possible times to learn your print was an eighth of an inch off in the wrong place.

Yeah, there are a few hard parts that I left out. Making it 'good enough' is hard, but for a reason I found surprising when developing the methods. Making the design look exactly right is quite easy, but making it feel perfect is damn-near impossible. The way it bends and the texture in your hands are qualities of the exact manufacturing process and materials, and you can never quite nail it with a knock-off.

That said, most people will never hand them to a customs agent, and I had reports that mine were accepted as ID by police officers on several occasions. Maybe the forger is more sensitive to the differences than most.

Post reply on HN