For four long years, Bronti Kelly couldn't figure out why no one wanted to hire him.
He handed department store managers across Southern California a resume full of sales experience, but was rejected hundreds of times. Those rare times when he got a job, he'd be fired within days.
Along the way, Kelly filed for bankruptcy, lost his apartment and turned homeless. "For years as this went on, I blamed myself--for not being hired for employment, the conditions I went through," Kelly says.
But Kelly's self-blame turned to anger when he finally learned the cause of much of his trouble: A man had given Kelly's identity to authorities when arrested for shoplifting and other crimes, and the tainted profile found its way onto a range of computer databases that employers use for background checks.
Kelly's plight illuminates the growing threats to privacy in an age of ever-easier computer access to public information. An inaccurate black mark left on a person's profile can be duplicated again and again without the victim's knowledge. The personal details are easily and cheaply obtainable--and open to abuse by crooks trying to dodge the law or make a buck.
It used to be that to get background information, you had to trek down to a courthouse, ask the clerk to direct you to the proper records and thumb through musty files. For another type of information, you had to visit yet another government agency.
But in recent years more and more information vendors have signed deals with governments and businesses for computer access that enables them to compile virtual dossiers on Americans--from Social Security numbers to shopping preferences.
Crooks no longer have to look for crumpled credit card carbons to steal a person's account number. Now, for nominal fees, personal details such as Social Security numbers can be found over the Internet and used to create a whole new identity for opening an account--and sticking the fraud victim with the bills.
Consumers Union in San Francisco found that half of credit-bureau reports surveyed in 1991 contained errors, about 20% of which were big enough to prevent an individual from buying a home or a car.
"The information age permits the exchange of data so quickly, with so few safeguards, that you really become a victim before you know it," says Edward Howard, head of the Los Angeles-based Center for Law in the Public Interest.
"Not only do you become a victim, you're constantly behind the curve when you're trying to clean it up."
Bronti Wayne Kelly, now 33, hardly foresaw the cyber-nightmare that would grow from what seemed an old-fashioned wallet-snatching in May 1990. He reported to police his wallet only contained $4--along with his driver's license, Social Security card and military I.D. for the Air Force base in Southern California where he served as a reservist.
But seven months later, Kelly, a salesman in the Robinsons-May department store in Riverside, was ushered into the personnel director's office and told he'd been caught shoplifting by security guards in another Robinsons.
Kelly produced a letter from his commanding Air Force officer saying that he was on duty when the crime occurred but was fired anyway. He says he was equally confounded by the blur of job rejections that followed, usually with no explanation.
For two years he held on--Kelly's work as a mechanic at the local Air Force base earned him about $700 a month. But in June 1993, the six-year reserve stint was up.
With no job in sight, Kelly filed for bankruptcy to stave off bill collectors. He was evicted from his apartment in San Bernardino.
Kelly stayed with friends until he wore out his welcome. He turned to sleeping in his car, then the streets, using public parking garages downtown to shield him from the elements.
He tried to keep clean using a pool shower at his old apartment complex. He applied for food stamps and welfare but was rejected because he had no residence.
In August 1994, he finally landed a job selling clothes at Harris department store in nearby Riverside, but the day before his first day of work was told his services weren't needed.
Kelly, crying at the news, tried to find out why. The personnel manager told him to contact Stores Protective Assn., which exchanges information about employees with more than 100 member retail chains.
Kelly wrote to SPA and received a written explanation in January 1995, pegging him for the same shoplifting offense that he'd thought was purged from the records four years earlier.
"I couldn't believe the information was still on file," Kelly says. "I had never even heard of [SPA] before."
But the vast majority of employers Kelly had applied to were members of SPA. It took until the next month for the association to remove Kelly's misinformation from its files, and only after a local television station reported his woes.
