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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."
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Cringely's just pissed that his DVD copy of "Beef Chunks in Gravy" was stolen from the mail.
1) Do stuff for free.
2) ?
3) Get identities worth $65 billions.
4) Profit!
Jeez, Cringely. First you ordered a book from amazon.com, one of the most consumer-hostile companies on the Internet given their "privacy policy" and dependence on trivial patents.
Then, you expect the corrupt government postal service to deliver it on time.
Here's a tip, Cringely. Go to this place called a "book store." It sells books for cash. You may have been able to "save" 50 cents on a Kelley Blue Book from spamazon.com, but how much is your privacy worth?
Pay for everything in cash. Never work for an employer that demands your Social Security number; if asked for it, make one up and use it instead. The algorithm for validating SSNs is freely available. Don't trust your money with "banks" or "credit cards." The only way to prevent identity theft is to protect your own identity as if it were a golden object -- or, as the French say, un objet d'or.
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
yeah, those old voting records are darned
interesting. not only do you get a nice
package of data on anybody who ever voted,
but if you are really clever you can find
dead people and really go to town... vote
for them, steal their identities... oops,
no, you can't. because the republican party
has already done it to pad the votes for
their honest and upstanding candidates.
think i'm making this up?
Scare-mongering anyone???
.
Cringley actually sounded smart! the world is ending tonight!