Taking Advantage of Identity Theft is something that I am still mastering the art of. This is a ground-breaking scoop on the poop of dealing with those people in your life who cannot be trained to keep their dang hands out of your wallet.

Given that this is my third social security number, I had been successful for a few years, prior to attending college, at keeping my social security number private. Not that this was such a great thing, however, it beat the mess that I got into when third parties once again started using my identification numbers.

Mystery shopping is one of the top ways that people use your social security number, and the service providers have no way of stopping it. Another thing that your college buddies will probably do is to sign you up for mail order classes.

At first, the mystery shopping seemed inocuous, my co-workers received free hamburgers and french fries from Wendy’s, and I kept my job at the college bookstore. Then, a waitress at my restaurant job began using my social security number to get herself great gigs at outer city restaurants by way of getting a competing waitress fired – hindsight is always 20-20 on this.

It was almost a relief when the girl who had cleared out of this social security number, demanding federal protection began using the social security number, without stealing the card, just by applying for one herself. When she acquired my old id card from a college in California, I was too busy to notice.

Then, my co-worker from a dance studio decided that she absolutely had to have a copy of my social security card and identification cards. My wallet was stolen in the middle of a snowstorm in Utah, and I could not even check into a public shelter without a photo ID card. I walked south towards Provo, and somehow got a ride. I was wearing a jacket, boots, and carrying an umbrella. It was awful, I was a little bit sick from this.

I dedicated myself to trying to slip out from under this group of people who were using my identification cards to lie about me, cheat on me, steal from me, and badmouth me.

I ended up staying at a public shelter in Reno, Nevada for two months, during which time,  another set of photo identification cards was stolen while on the collge campus.

Then, I went to scrambling, getting identification cards from Florida, Arizona, New York, California, and Texas in order to appease these identity theives – or at least to make certain that someone knew that there was someone else out there using my identification.

I discovered that a rock star was behind this, giving my identity cards to his groupies, who would subsequently proceed to write letters back to him using my name; they would also use my id cards to sell things at pawn shops and check into hotel rooms. Maybe I was lucky that he had decided to get all of his groupies my identification cards, and use their input to write a book with.

Letters by Ginger White – what a book!