Calling John Goldman

Let’s talk about identity for a little bit.

Do you know me? And if the answer is yes, let’s ask how you know me.

• Do you know where I live?
• Have we shared a meal?
• Have we talked on the phone?
• Have we swapped e-mails?
• Have you followed me on Twitter enough to know when I am joking?
• Did we go to school together?
• Are you family?
• Did I play a part in your wedding?
• Do you know my passwords? 

There are many degrees of knowledge, but when you get right down to it there are big cracks in the picture. Psychologically, we want to gloss over them because it’s uncomfortable to be with a stranger.

• So we swapped an e-mail. Anyone can spoof an address that looks legit.
• So we talked on the phone. Whose voice was that again?
• Twitter? Good luck.
• We went to school together? Think again.

Goldman’s Sacked

Enter John Goldman. John is about as off-the-grid as you can get. There are faint traces of him in my first high school yearbook: a picture here or there, and never any decent shot of his face. Some faculty members at Tuscaloosa County High School were quite worried when he didn’t show up for the 1984 graduation rehearsal. He never picked up his cap, gown, or any of his supplies.

John Goldman didn’t walk with his classmates. He couldn’t, because he was a creature of a total fabrication. Members of the yearbook staff made him out of whole cloth. (Full disclosure: I was not on the staff, but know the mastermind and those intimately involved.) It was a germ of a joke that sprouted legs, joined civic clubs, and failed to pick up its graduation paraphernalia. It was a deception and a conspiracy guided by an unusually light touch, and lasted longer than by rights it should if not for the discipline of those involved to keep the joke on the down-low.

It was identity theft, without an identity.

Circles and Rings

Which brings me to today.

I have several circles of friends in my Facebook. There is my high school crowd from Alabama. There’s my junior high crowd from Idaho (which has graciously granted me dual citizenship, if my alma mater once again forgets to invite me to a reunion.) There is a clique of former coworkers in Red Cross, my brothers and sisters in Kung Fu, and various communicators and marketers I’ve been privileged to connect with on various projects or to brainstorm. And there’s family.

These groups, these subtribes, are not created equal. Some know me as Ike, some know me as Isaac. Some have seen me cry, some have seen me bleed. Some have been over to my house for holidays, and some have been able to jump into a conversation with me as though 25 years had not flown by.

Some don’t know which foods I hate, nor which teams I root for, nor which movies I will never watch no matter the offered bounty. Some have no clue I grew up in Idaho, and many of them might have nominated me as least-likely to ever teach a martial art. It’s a good thing we’ve got profiles online to help us fill in the cracks, right?

Faceless Book

Unfortunately, we’ve now got these online profiles that help other people fill in the cracks.

Case in point: I have two friends on Facebook that I have worked with in the past. I worked with them in very different capacities on stories and projects years ago. As it happens, they are both affiliated with the same Bible college. Which means now my “People You May Know” box is filled with people that they know, and there is an assumption that I do as well. In my case, this is merely an annoyance.

Second case: Half of the graduating class in Idaho went to a different junior high, so I really never knew them at all. Seeing people with 31 mutual friends might be a strong indication that this indeed is one of my classmates, and with so many women using married names it can be really difficult to keep up. I find myself asking some rather rude questions, just to ensure I’m not adding a complete stranger and granting access to my private information. (Not that there’s anything salacious or dangerous there, but you see where this is headed…) 

Which got me to thinking: What if John Goldman started friending people from the Tuscaloosa County High class of 1984? How many would add him? After all, he is in the yearbook, right?

And how many would add him after three mutual friends showed up? What if it were five? 12? 21?

The vast majority of online theft is not hardcore math or data-hacking. It’s human hacking. It’s gaining human trust, and abusing that trust to trick us into handing over the keys. The numbers game of social networking has made it even easier to exploit, because now you don’t need to scam but a couple of people to see the rest start to tumble like dominos. The inherent peer pressure, combined with the desire to not admit that you might have rudely “forgotten” someone can be a powerful motivation toward a single click of the mouse.

As the threshold of “friendship” continues to degrade, mostly through the abuse and dilution of the term by social networks, we need to be smarter about how we connect. We now compile vast banks of data with little regard to who might see it. We pretend like we’re surrounded by a wall of “friends,” but increasingly there are cracks in that perimeter, the banks are breached.

And even if Willie Sutton didn’t really say it, the banks will be targets because that’s where the money is.