Corporate Identity Theft on the Rise

prostoalex writes "As millions of Americans lose their identities to online and offline thieves, a new kind of crime has been cooked up by the criminals who are not bothering with doing pesky credit card charges. They steal entire companies, opening up merchant accounts for existing businesses and running up charges from aforementioned stolen credit card numbers. What's worse, is that the hole the criminals exploit seems to be built into the system. According to Bob Sullivan from MSNBC, "Many of the processing firms interviewed for this article claimed they caught on to the fraud after the transactions had cleared, but before the suspects had withdrawn the money from various checking accounts around the country. One did concede, however, that the scheme has real potential.""

Comments

surely you can come up with better stories

[Anonymous Coward]

Identity theft is a serious crime, but honestly, this is just a new wrinkle. With everything out there cant you do btter than this??

Stolen?

[TrollBridge]

How exactly is one's identity stolen?

I was unaware that my identity was a physical object that could be carried away by burglars. Would a victim of "identity theft" no longer exist? Or would they become an identity-less zombie?

THIS IS NOT THEFT!!! Theft involves the physical taking of something!! Why do people insist on using inaccurate and inflammatory terms like theft when refering to the LIBERATION OF DATA!! INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!!!!