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Bill Introduced to Congress Would Allow ID Theft Restitution
verybadradio writes with an article at News.com about a bill introduced into Congress that would allow citizens who have been victimized by identity theft to seek repayment for the money and time spent repairing their credit history. The bill was introduced by Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. "Last year, 8.4 million Americans were victims of identity theft, and many were left with a bad credit report, which takes months or years to repair, the lawmakers said ... The bill would also eliminate a requirement that the loss resulting from damage to a victim's computer must exceed $5,000 for prosecution; make it a felony to use spyware or keyloggers to damage 10 or more computers; and expand the definition of cybercrime to include extortion schemes that threaten to damage or access confidential information on a computer."
I was the victim of identity theft about 6 years ago. It took me literally 2 years to clear my name. That's 2 years of making long distance phone calls, tracking down the right people, emailing, photocopying birth certificates and licenses, making police reports, etc, etc. All the while I was looked at with suspicion and I basically had to prove my innocence!
Whose fault was it that my identity was stolen? That would be the credit bureaus and the credit card companies that allowed it to happen, not me. It is their system that is at fault for allowing people to steal identities so easily. So why am I responsible to clean up their mess? If I have marks on my credit report, I should be able to tell the bureaus and that should be the end of it. I think restitution is the least they can do.
The real problem is that, as very well predicted, the use of social security numbers for anything other than social security will lead to all sorts of problems. The fact that a person's identity is essentially just this number and that the credit game has become an entrenched part of commerce and culture, they [the people behind the illegal use of social security numbers -- yes, it's illegal -- law was written to prevent this and everyone, including and especially the IRS has ignored it] have created a situation for which "they" should be held liable. Instead, they create the mess and we are somehow responsible for cleaning up the messes. And now with bills like this, the idea that "we" are responsible for when THEIR credit and identity systems are abused and used against us... that "we" can somehow prevent it from happening and it's our responsibility.
The abuse of SSNs and the credit system at large needs to be dismantled or severely reformed in such a way that the creators of the problem are liable for the problems it causes. As it stands, they can buy and sell "your information" because it's not your data... it's theirs... they collected it! But when it's abused and affects your life, YOU are responsible. How is that appropriate? NO. This bill is VERY wrong. The bill should assign liability to the parties responsible for creating the mess. This is just further effort to assign the liability of the SSN and credit industry to people who may not even be willing participants!
Basically, someone impersonates me. Some bank/merchant/credit card company extends credit without verification. The impersonator defaults. They report me as the deadbeat. That is the scenario. The creditor who mistakenly reported me should be liable for slander. The credit reporting agencies should be considered accessory after the fact. So the real culprits are the people who extend credit without verification and people who report me as a deadbeat without justification. Normally if they have to face full consequences of their action, they will clean up their act and we would not need any special laws for identity theft.
But congress in its infinite stupidity holds the impersonator the responsible for my ruined reputation. The impersonator is liable for lying, cheating, committing forgery and is responsible for all the damage caused to the credulous creditor. And if they call me a deadbeat without proper verification whoever reported me as the deadbeat is responsible for the damage caused to my good name.
As usual it is a credit reporting agency liability protection act being sold to the public as an anti-ID theft law.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The problem with this is that it only addresses 1 of the 5 known forms of identity theft. Financial Identity theft is estimated to be less than 26% of all ID theft crimes. For reference the other 4 are: 1) Drivers License - Someone can get using your DL # and you may have moving violations or points on your record that you don't know about it. This can happen in other states and it will take years to get back to you since the DMV's don't communicate all that well. Try fighting that. 2) Medical - Someone has procedures performed or gets checkups in your name. How would you like it if your insurance rates shot up because someone tested positive for HIV on your medical history. How about they change what you are allergic to and next time you go in they give something and you have an allergic reaction. Or maybe change your blood type. This can kill you and no one will know. 3) Character - Do you have outstanding arrest warrants in you name for crimes someone else committed? This can keep you from getting employed or you can lose your security clearance through no fault of your own. 4) Social Security - Has your SSN number been stolen and used by other people and reported to the IRS for tax reasons? You could be liable for a very large tax bill on income you didn't receive. The IRS doesn't care since most of the time they can force people to pay even though it wasn't them. Unfortunately congress doesn't seem to pay attention to the rest of these. Until they address all of them, we are all in trouble. --Peter
Credit card number theft is almost an insignificant issue. I've had unknown charges occur on my credit card, and in one of those cases, the card company contacted me. The other one only required a simple phone call. I'm not sure how they got the numbers---one of those cards had only been used once at CostCo---but it happens. Either way, it didn't cost me a dime.
This is about identity theft---stealing enough information to obtain credit cards of your own in someone else's name, then racking up thousands of dollars of debt. EMV doesn't solve any fraud issues because most identity theft is either A. caused by somebody giving out information too willingly to someone who really doesn't need it, or B. caused by somebody who should have been trustworthy not taking care of the data that they retain. EMV won't help either of those situations. (For people who aren't aware, EMV is a smart card system for credit cards. AFAIK, EMV also won't really solve card number theft, since internet purchases have to be made the old-fashioned way unless you just happen to be willing to buy a reader for your computer....)
The only thing that will really solve identity theft is making credit card companies and credit agencies fully responsible for every penny of losses due to identity theft. This law is exactly backwards and should not be passed. The reality is, we wouldn't have identity theft problems if those companies were held liable for losses. You would apply for a credit card, and they would make phone calls to your last known telephone number, give you some code number, and ask you to call a 1-800 number and enter that code in order to complete the request. The fact that they don't do even the most basic checks to verify the validity of a CC request is proof positive that they are content to let merchants and individuals bear the brunt of their own incompetence.
I've never had my identity stolen, but if it happened to me, the first thing I'd do is hire a lawyer to sue every reporting agency that the CC company contacted for credit history information. If the reporting agency were responsible, they would have contacted me and asked for authorization before releasing that information. As far as I'm concerned, a credit reporting agency should not have the right to retain data on me nor to release that data to anyone without my explicit permission. That means checking signatures against known signatures on file, contacting me at known prior addresses/phone numbers, etc. Then, I would follow that by suing the credit card company for similarly failing to properly research the request. When it was all over, my credit history would still be screwed, but at least I'd have gotten enough money out of the dirty scumbags that I wouldn't have to care.
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