Tuesday 5 October 2010

ID diatribe


Having failed to be verified
electronically
as a valid bona fide person,
I have spent a large portion of today
assembling documents to prove my legitimacy
from List One, List Two and List Three.
So that would be one from List One
and two from List Three
or two from List Two
and one from List Three,
or a copy of my passport
and my driving licence
and the paper version of above,
but if I am sending photocopies 
they must be authorised and signed
by a person more valid and bona fide than me
but I can send copies of 
utility bills, (not my mobile phone)
and bank statements
or a credit card statement
or a Firearms or Shotgun certificate
(now where did I put that?)
or tax notification, 
or notice of coding or statements
or a Building Society passbook
or a local authority rent book
or recent evidence of a local authority funded benefit scheme,
(and I must choose a password
and two secret answers
and a significant place
and my mother's maiden name
and a significant date,
none of which should be committed to paper)
and then when I have posted these by Recorded Delivery
will I not have furnished some complete stranger
with the comprehensive means to be
a valid bona fide replica of me?


I just wanted to open a savings account.
But now I wish I had put it
under the mattress
where I honestly believe
it would have been safer.





7 comments:

  1. Wow! What a day. All of these paper trails. OMG!!!!

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  2. Absolute nightmare Lucille - I agree. Erm - I think you forgot your national insurancew number and the name of your first boyfriend!

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  3. Shudder.... reminds me of when I first accessed my Local Government pension, and couldn't remember certain sections of my life - probably for good reasons - whereupon the woman at the other end of the phone said something like "Wait, and I'll go back to our records for 1975...." and furnished me with the missing details. Scary in the extreme!

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  4. getting ridiculous isn't it? And... then....we give up every single bit of our personal lives every time we do these things...and "they", in "their" infinite wisdom, wonder why there is so much identity theft. Gee.... not much wonder there.....

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  5. One year our bank contacted us and said the U.S. Army (my husband is a veteran on pension) had contacted them to let them know that he, my husband was dead and they would no longer be sending his pension check. That was fun proving he was still alive.

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  6. and then one asks, "Are you for real?"

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  7. Oh dear! I remember thinking the same thing as I faxed copies of my driver's license and medicare card to a ticket agency so they could transfer the ticket into my son's name. I willed them to shred the fax the minute they approved them.
    I think by now you have sorted this all out, and I just love the engraving for the Princess and the Pea.

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