The Fake Identity Toolkit

Nowadays, obtaining a new identity is not as difficult as it once was, with Everett forging all the documents in his basement.Of course, most people who assume a new identity do it to hide from less omnipresent organizations than the federal government and its many intelligence operations. Most people who create a new legitamate identity do it by registering new names and social security numbers with the government, meaning that the government has a record of these changes. However, this new identity can help certain people slip under the radar of other organizations. I found several stories that interested me about creating new idendities.
The first is the simplest, and the only one that would allow you to keep your identity change secret from the federal government. According to Bob Burton, president of Cobra, a bounty hunting organization, assuming a new identity is as simple as obtaining the birth certificate of a dead person:

"You look in the obituaries," Mr. Burton said, "in Topeka, Kan., say. You want a gas station attendant more or less your age. Once you get the date of birth, you call the county. 'Hi, I used to live in Kansas, but I've been living in American Samoa for the last 20 years as a Christian missionary. Any chance I could get a copy of my birth certificate?' 

If the ruse works, you can now become a new person. Since you possess one piece of real identification belonging the this person,  you can obtain others. To the federal government, you exist, and the other person exists, but by becoming both of them, you have hidden yourself from them.
I also read about Frank Cullotta, a former mob hit man who had several run ins with the people he was informing on and was entered into the Witness Protection Program by the federal government to protect him from other organizations.He made the switch to a new identity sound much more difficult that Burton did. Here are some of the general guidelines he gave for keeping your identity hidden:

1. Come into your new town with a story: "They asked me why I came there and I would say I was married and my wife got killed in an automobile accident, and I didn't want to stay where I was at anymore because of the memories..."
2. Don't take pictures of yourself an post them to any social media site because there will inevitably be something in the background that could identify you or the place where you are living.
3. No credit history is a problem. Claim that previously you had chosen to spend only cash for idealistic reasons, but now you think that credit will be a little more secure as you get older. "They want your money. They give you a little static at first but they’ll take your money.”
4. According to Cullotta, it is nearly impossible to change your personality or demeanor though: "You hear my voice? Can you imagine me living in Biloxi, Mississippi?...Of course, people would look at me and they would say, ‘you’re a Yankee, you’re a gangster, you sound like a gangster,’” he said in a strong Chicago accent. “So I tried to dress down. I wore ball caps, jeans, tennis shoes, s— I never wore in my life to try to fit in, but I still had that accent. And the demeanor, how I walk and carry myself which is almost impossible to change. It is impossible for me to change.”

It is interesting to me to see how much you have to change to disappear, even when you are not trying to hide from the government, and these points were just a few of many. The next story was just kind of interesting. Jacob Allred, whose other hobby is reading and writing science fiction, runs the site fakenamegenerator.com, a comepletely legal site that creates "a name, date of birth, address, email, Social Security number, mother’s maiden name, even a credible-looking credit card number with expiry date and security code" for billions of new identities every month. He uses real street names, zip codes, telephone numbers, and names from databases of common names and mixes up the data to get a fake but realistic new identity. Some people use these idenities online, and others generate them just for fun. Some people use the name database to look at baby names, while researches sometimes use large batches of fake identities to test database systems. Even though most people do not do illegal things with the identities, the federal government is somewhat suspicious. The FBI and the NSA have been looking into the operation, and the government has asked him not to post social security numbers (even fake ones) openly on the internet. 
 To me, it is interesting to see how someone could remake themselves if necessary. I think it would be very difficult, and I would not want to do it myself, but it is amazing how some people have just disappeared and started entirely new lives in new places.