The lighter side of identity theft

Have you ever had to pretend to be someone else to solve a problem?
The internet at my place went out recently after a power outage; the account is in the name of a person who hasn't lived here in two years. In order to get anything out of the customer serviced center I've had to pretend to be "Samuel Bawden", and they believe me without question. All I needed to supply was the account number off the bill, my address and his phone number. The phone number was the tricky part, as he hasn't lived here in two years it took some serious digging to come up with. But, thanks to an English tech support number a helpful staff, I have been able to wrangle a solution to this problem, but it'll still take three or four days to get my internet back. The scary thing is that while, with this little information I was able to solve this problem by convincing them that I was Sam, that's all it took to convince them. A name, an address and a phone number; with these one could cause an immense amount of trouble for someone else.
Also, it was interesting being on the other side of the call center. That is, I believe these people that were answering the phone in English were based in America. Although it's not terribly surprising, it was interesting to encounter this outsourcing from the other side of the globe, not American calls to Asia (India), but Asian (Japanese) calls to America. Globalization and outsourcing work in all directions.