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Government To Fix Identity Theft?
Cobb writes "With nearly 50 million identities compromised in the last 6 months, the powers that be are gearing up to fix the problem. 'Prosecutors and privacy experts say that what America needs is a coordinated national strategy. While 15 states require companies to tell consumers if their data has been compromised, there's still no national law.' A new study joins a host of other statistics -- some private, some government-sponsored -- attempting to quantify the size of the ID theft problem. There is no universal agreement on the size of the problem, on the way to count the victims, or even on how to define identity theft."
Maybe he's more credit worth than you are? ;)
:-)
No, the dog is totally irresponsible with credit.
Anyway, it happened cause I was too cheap to pay extra to have the data phone line (pre-broadband) unlisted. Solution - list the data line in the dog's name. Side effect - ads and credit card offers mailed to to dog.
[Insert pithy quote here]
From TFA (which did not have a lot of details), I got the impression that the laws would be geared toward companies that control your personal information and intimidate them into being responsible with it.
For once it looks like "hackers" aren't going to be the scapegoat on this one. Although it may be too soon to tell.
Biometrics is not an end-all, be-all solution. Any electronic data can be compromised. ANY. Digitally encoded biometric data, hardened database, etc. can all be broken or circumvented. It seems stupid to me why people push 'passwords' that you cannot change and/or change themselves over time (biometrics). If this information is ever compromised, and odds are it will eventually, then you will not have an option to set it to something that hasn't been.
Consider this. Fingerprint biometrics. Someone manages to steal a record of your 10 fingerprints, and is capable of reproducing them to fool a biometric sensor. You can no longer be assured that anyone using fingerprint identification is truely you, and what would you change your authentication credentials to after that, your footprint?
Vein biometrics (hand, as per previously recorded on Slashdot) change based on what you're doing, over time, with vascular problems, etc.
Fingerprints are unchangable, but you have a limited quantity (10) and after that, you have little recourse.
Voice prints may be able to be mimiced sufficiently with recorders, or worse, you could be denied access one day because you had a cold.
Biometrics may be used to help such a system, but they could never take the place of any aspect that may need to be changed at random, such as a password.
We want to be able to walk into a car delership, bank, electronics store and walk out with whtever it is we want on credit. The only way this is possible is for the financiers to have access to our "credit history" to see what interest level they can shaft us with. If we are so ticked with identity theft, the quickest cure is for us to have a little patience and wait a couple of days for purchase confirmation on big ticket items, and callbacks on others.
Let's say you go to an online merchant and made a purchase. The financial institution should then call you at the phone numbers of record, that you gave when you opened the account, to confirm that it is indeed you that is making the purchase. This would maybe slow us down, and horror of horrors may force us to actually think about whether or not we actually need whatever it is that we are purchasing.
We have been so trained to want things instantly that we are willing to give up part of our financial security for immediate "satisfaction".
Sorry for the rant, but it isn't just the companies that are to blame, and a solution that punishes the institutions without challenging our ways of thinking about the way we approach our finances is only going to change the problem's appearance, not fix it.
I'm a happy pessimist. I expect and prepare for the worst, when it doesn't happen I am pleasantly surprised.
Funny how fast things happen when the FTC Chief gets their credit card info stolen..
#include bier;