A Good Reason to Ruthlessly Avoid Identity Theft

Recently, a TOR network was compromised. This means that, at least for a time, even a person using the most powerful anonymizing tools of the internet was vulnerable to having their identity stolen.

Postulate the following:

An A(dvanced) P(ersistent) T(hreat) steals an email address. They have already been stealing contact lists, so they could actually arrange to have the email delivered to an address in their own country. They parcel out each address from the contact list - (junk mail self-segregates,) and assign a different provocateur to each contact. New contacts are added as they trickle in.

Thereafter, the person whose email address has been thus compromised, innocently passes out their contact info, and sends emails to people near and far, trying to promote his business. For a week or two, emails go back and forth as normal. But after time has passed, when he goes to reconnect with old contacts, he finds that their efforts to contact him have been supplanted by a foreign agent. Subtle or blockheaded, sinister or inept, as the luck of the draw would have it, these malicious agents have ruined his influence by misrepresentation. 

If it is a competency, he appears incompetent. If it is a love interest, he appears insincere. If it is a friendship, he appears spiteful. If it is one of the rare opportunities that the Free Enterprise system attempts to capitalize on, his talent is thwarted, and the best of both parties is stolen away by someone who may never even attempt to succeed.

The best case scenario, is that the provocateur successfully steals his idea, and starts his own business ahead of the American.

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