How did people in the past prevent identity theft? I mean before the photos and new secure technology on identity documents were available?
In: 568
Commoners avoided identity theft by virtue of their identity being of no particular value. Nobles and rich merchants weren’t very numerous and tended to know each other. Also, there was a noticeable difference in habits, behaviour, manners and language depending on your social class, and rarely one could pass as someone of a higher class.
Still, identity theft did happen even among nobility and royalty. The phenomenon of pretender claimants is well known among historians, but even in those cases, the class gap was not very large. For example, there were two infamous Russian pretenders: False Demetrius and Princess Tarakanova. The former was, most likely, an ex-cleric, that is, an educated person who could pass as a noble, the latter was a noblewoman herself. Another Russian pretender claimant, Emelyan Pugachev, was very very obviously a fake, a crude rustic Cossack claiming to be Tsar Peter III, but his followers were disgruntled commoners who did want to believe.
Latest Answers