Doctoral Dissertation Research: Identity Theft Remediation and the Production of Economic Insecurity

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Identity theft is often considered one of the fastest growing and most pressing financial crimes in the United States. Each year it affects millions of Americans and results in financial losses for businesses and consumers in the tens of billions of dollars. Many victims also report negative emotional and physical effects and face inaccurate credit reports, unanticipated debt, and rejection for financial accounts, loans, or insurance. While prior research links these latter consequences to the complicated steps for resolving identity theft, it fails to offer an explanation for why individuals struggle to "recover their identities." By exploring that process in depth, this project will assess the efficacy of contemporary processes for resolving identity theft and their consequences for American households.This project investigates identity theft resolution from the perspective of victims and the organizations they navigate. Through in-depth interviews with victims, it explores how individuals go about resolving identity theft and details the financial and emotional toll that experience takes on them and their families. It also examines the perceived issues and challenges facing organizations and government agencies involved in the remediation process by interviewing staff and observing work in key organizational contexts. Together, these methods will elucidate how managing personal data contributes to economic and other forms of insecurity in American households, as well as how actors negotiate risk and trust to repair breakdowns in expert systems for identification-sociotechnical systems central to the generally smooth operation of countless economic and political processes in everyday life.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.