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Cringely on Identity Theft
Boiled Frog writes "Prompted by the theft of his mail, Cringely investigates how easy it is to steal identities from government publications. In this article he explains how he got the identities of 300,000 people which he calculates to be valued at $65 billion dollars. If Cringely can do it, anyone can."
Say what you will about him, but almost anything of Cringelys that i've read turns out to be insightful and informative, and this article is no exception.
I like how 2 people modded this redundant, apparently without looking at the time stamps. Can it really be redundant if it's posted at the same time? Redundant is for posts that show an obvious lack of reading previous (not simultaneous) posts. At least that's what I read in the Mod FAQ before I started using my points.
:-)
This post, however, is clearly Offtopic
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
That's funny, in Louisiana the Dead are all registered Democrats. Wonder what's so different about the Afterlife where you live that everyone would vote Republican. Maybe I should move to your state before I die if that means I get to hang out with a bunch of Conservatives once I kick the bucket. ;)
Sorry, just can't take an AC post seriously...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Cringely got his 300,000 IDs from a publicly available government data source. He barely did any work to get them; all it took was some ingenuity to cross-reference two separate sources.
This is why centralization of data is bad. The convenience isn't worth it when the consequences are destroyed livlihoods or, at least, seven days stolen from a person's life (175 man-hours average to resolve identity theft).
So, why are so many people begging for things like social security in the first place? Nationalized health care? Federal income tax? TIA? The percieved benefit of these things is superficial, when much deeper and more dangerous rifts are just waiting to surface.
A person's identity has many more dimensions than simply address, SSN, and mother's maiden name, but government complacency has filtered into nearly every aspect of our lives and our businesees to create a timebomb of terrible proportions.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I rarely buy anything with checks. But when I do, I get a little bit peeved. I wish those clerks wouldn't just wave my check around for anyone to see. I wish they'd treat it like it has confidential information, because it DOES! My bank routing number, by account number, my name, address, telephone number.
You'd think someone would train these register monkeys that they're holding a sensitive document in their hand, instead of proudly displaying it for anyone who wants my personal account information.