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

身份盗窃通常被认为是美国增长最快、最紧迫的金融犯罪之一。每年它影响数百万美国人，给企业和消费者造成数百亿美元的经济损失。许多受害者还报告了负面的情绪和身体影响，面临不准确的信用报告，意外的债务，以及金融账户、贷款或保险的拒绝。虽然之前的研究将后一种后果与解决身份盗窃的复杂步骤联系在一起，但它未能解释为什么个人难以“找回自己的身份”。通过深入探讨这一过程，该项目将评估当代解决身份盗窃问题的程序的有效性及其对美国家庭的影响。该项目从受害者和他们所访问的组织的角度调查身份盗窃问题的解决。通过对受害者的深入采访，它探索了个人如何解决身份盗窃问题，并详细说明了经历给他们和他们的家人带来的经济和情感损失。它还通过约谈工作人员和观察关键组织背景下的工作，审查参与补救进程的组织和政府机构所面临的可察觉的问题和挑战。总之，这些方法将阐明管理个人数据如何导致美国家庭的经济和其他形式的不安全，以及行为者如何协商风险和信任，以修复识别专家系统中的故障。识别专家系统是无数经济和政治进程在日常生活中总体平稳运行的关键社会技术系统。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.