How did people in the past prevent identity theft? I mean before the photos and new secure technology on identity documents were available?

Question

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

Answer 1

I don’t think they did. If you read old spy novels, one common method used to get a false identity is to find a birth certificate of a child that died soon after birth, and use that to apply for a passport, etc. I don’t think this would work now, and maybe it didn’t work back then, but this method is brought multiple times in old novels.