The cases given are already under regulatory protection and so have their own terminology. There are kinds of thefts which leave the bit trail pointing to someo

The cases given are already under regulatory protection and so have their own terminology. There are kinds of thefts which leave the bit trail pointing to someone, when they shouldn't be. If the bit trail is not crossing major regulatory boundaries, but is affecting things like what Google knows about someone's personal preference or what items Facebook decides to show in his/her feed, or some personally incriminating things is done to them in the digital world (ex the recent post about upwork), the fact that folks may trust the bit trail more than they trust the person can be damaging esply if in-person contact is not the norm. In all these cases it involves someone taking an identifying token and pretending to be you for a while. The taking is done without permission, so it amounts to stealing. So I don't see a particular harm in bucketing this category of activity as "identity theft".