The Less People Know About Us: A Mystery of Betrayal, Family Secrets, and Stolen Identity

This book is about a family and its trips through life while significantly marred by one thing: identity theft.

For decades, this family was eked out of its money by somebody who was stealing their mail, their social security numbers, who created bank accounts in their names and made the credit scores for the individual members of the family sink to the very bottom.

That is discussed throughout the book, along with some scant stories about the family's life together. The writer is the young daughter of the family; today, she is a frequently-asked expert on identity theft.

I think I first heard about this book from a podcast episode where the author spoke about her ordeals, life, and actual conclusion of the entire matter.

Sadly, for me, that's where the gist of this book lay; it's not enough to fan out in book form. Where somebody like Tara Westover, whose Educated is written by somebody who carries both fact and flair equally well, this book is quite light-weight and contains far more filler than killer. One good thing about this book is that it's very easily read.

Here's an opening section of the book:

It had been a long day at school and the roots of a headache had planted themselves near the outer corners of my eyes. There were hours of homework in my immediate future but as I walked through the parking lot of my building, I wistfully considered a nap. The manila envelope I found folded over and jammed in my mailbox was the last thing I wanted to deal with. With a groan of resignation, I yanked it from the box. It was a lot bigger than I had expected a credit report to be. Must come with a lot of instructions, I thought. Most of me wanted to drop it by the front door and forget about it for a while, but I leaned against the arm of my hand-me-down, green-floral-print couch with my legs crossed and tore it open instead.

There have been a few moments in my life when reality has skipped in front of me like a broken television—and I remember this one in slow motion. Sliding my finger under the thick flap of that envelope, feeling the adhesive give way and the paper tear in jagged intervals—those were the last indelible sensations of an existence I understood. And then, as sure as the sharp edges of paper in my hands, another existence took its place. A new life, a different identity. I did not find any instructions inside the envelope.

Instead, I found the report, with the bulk of a term paper, full of fraudulent credit card charges and collection agency entries in my name. Discover, Bank One, First USA. Pages of numbers and dates as foreign as a language I did not speak. The first line of credit had been opened in 1993, when I was eleven. That was the year my parents’ identities had been stolen.

My credit score was 380. For a merciful second I thought maybe that was good. After all, 100 is perfect. It always had been in school, anyway. Then I saw the corresponding key. My score of 380 placed me in the second percentile of all scorers in the United States. About as low as it gets. As my body folded over the arm of the couch, my mind struggled to make sense of these bizarre numbers. Surely they’ll know—I was just a kid; I couldn’t have done this. I felt the sting of tears on my cheeks. Who would do this to me?

This book would have fared a lot better had it been written with better style.

The best parts of the book aren't contained in The Big Reveal but in how the author writes of family fights and how far this gigantic scam went.

I can't recommend this book, but if you're a quick reader and keen for some true crime, I guess this is OK, even though there are plenty of books like it that I preferred reading.

This book is about a family and its trips through life while significantly marred by one thing: identity theft.

For decades, this family was eked out of its money by somebody who was stealing their mail, their social security numbers, who created bank accounts in their names and made the credit scores for the individual members of the family sink to the very bottom.

That is discussed throughout the book, along with some scant stories about the family's life together. The writer is the young daughter of the family; today, she is a frequently-asked expert on identity theft.

I think I first heard about this book from a podcast episode where the author spoke about her ordeals, life, and actual conclusion of the entire matter.

Sadly, for me, that's where the gist of this book lay; it's not enough to fan out in book form. Where somebody like Tara Westover, whose Educated is written by somebody who carries both fact and flair equally well, this book is quite light-weight and contains far more filler than killer. One good thing about this book is that it's very easily read.

Here's an opening section of the book:

It had been a long day at school and the roots of a headache had planted themselves near the outer corners of my eyes. There were hours of homework in my immediate future but as I walked through the parking lot of my building, I wistfully considered a nap. The manila envelope I found folded over and jammed in my mailbox was the last thing I wanted to deal with. With a groan of resignation, I yanked it from the box. It was a lot bigger than I had expected a credit report to be. Must come with a lot of instructions, I thought. Most of me wanted to drop it by the front door and forget about it for a while, but I leaned against the arm of my hand-me-down, green-floral-print couch with my legs crossed and tore it open instead.

There have been a few moments in my life when reality has skipped in front of me like a broken television—and I remember this one in slow motion. Sliding my finger under the thick flap of that envelope, feeling the adhesive give way and the paper tear in jagged intervals—those were the last indelible sensations of an existence I understood. And then, as sure as the sharp edges of paper in my hands, another existence took its place. A new life, a different identity. I did not find any instructions inside the envelope.

Instead, I found the report, with the bulk of a term paper, full of fraudulent credit card charges and collection agency entries in my name. Discover, Bank One, First USA. Pages of numbers and dates as foreign as a language I did not speak. The first line of credit had been opened in 1993, when I was eleven. That was the year my parents’ identities had been stolen.

My credit score was 380. For a merciful second I thought maybe that was good. After all, 100 is perfect. It always had been in school, anyway. Then I saw the corresponding key. My score of 380 placed me in the second percentile of all scorers in the United States. About as low as it gets. As my body folded over the arm of the couch, my mind struggled to make sense of these bizarre numbers. Surely they’ll know—I was just a kid; I couldn’t have done this. I felt the sting of tears on my cheeks. Who would do this to me?

This book would have fared a lot better had it been written with better style.

The best parts of the book aren't contained in The Big Reveal but in how the author writes of family fights and how far this gigantic scam went.

I can't recommend this book, but if you're a quick reader and keen for some true crime, I guess this is OK, even though there are plenty of books like it that I preferred reading.