Nick Bilton

It all began 36 years ago in the sun-drenched streets of Albuquerque, where William Woods was working at a hot dog stand, serving office workers and city dwellers. On an otherwise unremarkable day, his coworker—a large man with dark hair named Matthew Keirans—stole Woods’s wallet. With it, Keirans pilfered not just Woods’s Social Security number but eventually his entire identity. The theft was the seed of an existential usurpation and the beginning of a Kafkaesque nightmare for William Woods. T…