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Data Theft Soars to Unprecedented Levels
A Wired article reports on data loss in 2007, and the numbers aren't good. Credit card and social security theft was at an all-time high, with even more losses expected in 2008. Information thieves, it seems, are just one step ahead of IT security. "While companies, government agencies, schools and other institutions are spending more to protect ever-increasing volumes of data with more sophisticated firewalls and encryption, the investment often is too little too late. 'More of them are experiencing data breaches, and they're responding to them in a reactive way, rather than proactively looking at the company's security and seeing where the holes might be,' said Linda Foley, who founded the San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center after becoming an identity theft victim herself."
Just provide your credit card number to me and I will make sure no one steals it.
Irresponsible data handling by employees at retail stores probably contributes quite a bit.
One of my friends went dumpster diving at Compusa. On top of finding almost every cable you'd ever need to hook anything up, he found over 70 pages of daily reports disclosing full credit card numbers, expiration dates, first/last names, and card company. Personal checks that were used during that day listed the account #, routing #, first/last name, birthdate, drivers license #, address, phone number, and probably some other stuff. He found this on two separate occasions, with over 300 cards listed total. None of the papers were shredded/torn either. He didn't intend to find this stuff - Imagine how easy it must be for somebody who actually wants the information!
The majority of the population doesn't understand how seriously security needs to be taken when venturing online to make purchases. If people understood going onto unsecured networks/etc was pretty much the same as leaving your credit card/checkbook in the front seat of your car, leaving the doors unlocked, and parking it in a bad neighborhood they might take security more seriously.
Sure - Most of the time if you leave stuff in your car unsecured, it'll be there when you get back. But there's always that small chance it'll get stolen.
In the olden days (like 10+ years ago), if someone wrote a check in someone else's name, it was called "fraud". It is, in fact, a crime where someone steals money from the bank.
:(
At some point, someone changed the vocabulary, and now we call this "identify theft", and so we make the crime against the person who's name was forged. In fact, this person has nothing to do with this crime, and is an innocent bystander. The bank is charged with protecting my assets, and if they fail to do so, they should be liable, just as much as if someone walked into the bank with a gun and took it!
By convincing society at large that the crime is "identity theft" and not "fraud", the corporations, while not solving the problem of fraud, has made it someone else's problem; namely their customers. And the customers accept this, and direct their ire against the criminals, instead of against the company. (Admittedly the criminals are Bad People, so they do deserve to be feared and hated.)
In some ways, it is a stroke of genius by the corporate world. But not one that we should celebrate.