On the subject of 'identity theft' several years ago, and without any net involvement, a conman of the same age obtained a copy of my husband's birth certificate, persuaded (with a sob story) a London cleric to sign his passport application that he had known him for the requisite number of years, gained a passport in my husband's name and in that name committed various crimes all over Europe. The first my husband knew of it was when the police asked him to accompany them to the police station here in the IOM, fingerprinted him and took photos from all angles to fax to Interpol. I think they were very disappointed to find that they had not in fact caught a master criminal.

Nowadays, it would be a little more difficult for a criminal to find someone who has never held a passport - the conman who took my husband's identity even engineered a meeting with us to ascertain in the course of normal conversation whether my husband was likely to have a passport! No one would think it unusual to be approached by someone trying to trace his Manx ancestry and this is the method our conman chose - I spent hours in the Manx Museum searching for a fictional link between him and my husband's family!

Years later on arrival at the airport in Chicago for a holiday, (airport police with guns very much in evidence), we were held up for hours by bemused immigration officers who wondered how an international criminal had suddenly acquired a wife and several children! The fact is, any criminal can obtain the info he wants because it is already in the public domain and speaking from experience I can say that the conman is extremely engaging, pleasant and wonderfully polite and well able to obtain any other info he needs.

Despite this experience I think it would be very sad if we all stopped helping one another including using the net. Personally I wouldn't publish details of the living on the net, just in case. However, I have included the living in family history exhibitions but without personal details such as date of birth - some people are very sensitive about that. And, unless it was well over a hundred years ago I wouldn't include illegitimacy or other sensitive info.