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."

Comments

On the other hand...

[Sheetrock]

Imagine the savings to industry if we all shared the same identity.

Databases are a pain to maintain.

Let me be the first moron to say . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . it's not identify "theft," it's identity infringement.

~~~

Re:The first step is to identify the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone steals your credit card number and orders porn? That's no longer credit card fraud, that's identity theft.

Someone forges a check against your bank account for porn? That's no longer check fraud, that's identity theft.

Somebody ordering a pizza in your name, because they can't afford porn? That's no longer a phone prank, that's identity theft.

So, you're saying the answer to identity theft is free porn?

The problem is us

[GlL]

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.