Using synthetic decoys to digitally watermark personally-identifying data and to promote data security

Identity theft continues to be an ever-present problem. Identity theft and other related crimes are becoming an unparalleled phenomenon that nearly everyone will have to deal with in some way in the coming years. As the number of people affected by identity theft and data spills has grown into the tens of millions, more needs to be done in the way of providing mechanisms to secure personally identifying data, including data consisting of social security numbers, names, addresses, and phone numbers. One such mechanism that would enhance security is the use of realistic synthetic decoy records. These decoys would be inserted into the actual data in such a way that only the person or program that inserted the decoys can tell what is real and what is synthetic. Also, these decoys could also be created in such a way that they are probabilistically unique, making a kind of watermark for that particular dataset. This paper examines a method by which identity theft can be combated by using decoys as described above. While decoys do not hide or encrypt the actual personally identifying data, it will be shown that they can be used to uniquely pin point particular data sources, making it possible to isolate what source was used in the theft. It will also be shown how realistic decoys make it much more difficult to use the actual data, because of the inability to distinguish between what is real and what is fake. Finally, we will show how we have implemented a system that is capable of producing these very realistic, personally identifying, decoy records. 1