As I was picking up my bag late last night at the airport I was noticing all of the junk that was left on the baggage carousel. Some of it was candy, odd bits of paper, and what looked like an elementary school student's homework. Among the odd items were at least 3 luggage tags with a person's name, address, and phone number. I got to thinking about my own bags that have the same information on them. I do it because I want the airline to be able to get my bag back to me when they loose it. And if you think they won't loose your bag all I can say is you are either the luckiest person in the world or have not traveled enough. I don't mind putting that information on the bag because it is all public information available on the Internet and countless editions of phone books.

I have been thinking about identity a little lately and I am planning on submitting a session on it for TechEd. One thing that is very interesting for me is how free some people are with their information. About 10 years ago I was complaining to a co-worker about how many web sites were starting to require an e-mail address to download trial versions of their software. He suggested that I open a Hotmail account for them. I did that and I have been putting all that junk mail into the account and signing into it occasionally to just make sure that I keep the account and to clean it out. Over the years I have noticed that I am not the only one who uses "my" e-mail account. Of course my wife uses it also but I also have some other "friends" who have decided to use it.

One of these people lives back east. I know they have a girl who is about 15 years old and is active in a swim team. I have figured this out from the e-mails that come for this girl and her parents. At first I tried responding to the sender telling them that they had the wrong address but they keep sending them. One of the senders has also been kind enough to include his address and cell phone number.

I also have 2 other friends. One who is sending their Delta Skymiles e-mail to me and the other who is sending his American Airlines account e-mail. In both of these cases if I decided to be malicious I could go in and request a password reset. Since the new password would be sent to me I could change it to whatever I want and then transfer their miles, request an award ticket, or even change their mailing address to somewhere else. Since I have not way of getting in touch with these people other than changing the password on their account and getting a physical address I am just hoping that they sometime have an interaction with the airline that will help them to correct their e-mail address.

I realize that just having a name and an address is not really enough to start identity theft (or more accurately identity fraud) on that person it is still a start and I could probably start targeting them off that information and figure out if they live in an affluent area or more details about their lives.

I guess maybe I am a little bit paranoid but as I am prone to say "better safe than sorry". If you want to become my friend and send all your personal e-mail into my account so I can blog about you as well please feel free to contact me and I will make sure to publicly berate you some time in the future.