Life on Florida’s West Coast

How Safe is Your ID?

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Sometimes I wonder how easy it would be for someone to impersonate a celebrity. I have heard stories of people getting tables at hot restaurants because they look or sound a little like a well known person, despite the fact that they are nobody in particular.

So, what if I came across a wallet discarded on the sidewalk. Now, let me preface this with the statement that I would personally feel compelled to do the right thing and try to contact the person who had lost the wallet. But let’s just say, for purposes of my illustration, that I looked inside that wallet and found the ID and credit cards for a very well-known and easy to impersonate celebrity.

In fact, what if it were simple enough to dress my own daughter up as this celebrity, since the gal I have in mind is quite tiny and pretty much covers head to tie when she goes out in public. Here, can you tell who I have in mind?  Gigi saw some pictures of this former teen sensation and thinks it’s a hoot to dress up like her, at her bag-lady best:

Can you guess who she is pretending to be? Keep in mind that although she thinks it is great fun to impersonate this media darling, I will not let her go as far as to pretend to holding the ever-present cigarette and cup of take-out coffee.

We all know just how easy it is for someone to take your ID and credit cards and perpetrate identity theft. My point is that it’s so sadly simple that even people with well known names and faces are at risk. I’ve seen people fooled by impersonators that don’t look or sound ANYTHING like the person they are being paid to impersonate. I have a friend who has a son who gets paid to make appearances impersonating Tom Cruise, and although he looks a tiny bit like the actor the resemblance is not astonishing. Even so, he pulls it off anfools people in public all the time. People are gullible and when they think they are face to face with a star, they often go all starry-eyes and overlook the obvious.

If Gigi tried to buy things like floppy hats, massive sunglasses, granny shawls, and cigarettes while dressed as this celeb and using her ID and credit cards, it may in fact me easier than you think to pull one over on people. It just illustrates that nobody is safe from identity theft and absolutely everyone needs to do what they can to prevent it from happening to you. I think about services like Life Lock and how timely they are in today’s society.

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