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Identity Theft Skeptic Ends Up As Fraud Victim
An anonymous reader writes "British TV host Jeremy Clarkson recently wrote a newspaper editorial ridiculing the uproar that had occurred after the British government admitted to losing two compact discs containing the personal information on 25 million people. To support his claim about the overhyped risks of identity theft, he published his bank account information in the article. Proving that some identity thieves have a sense of humor, a week later, he found out that someone had set up an automatic bank transfer for $1000 to a diabetes charity from his account. This comes less than a year after the CEO of LifeLock, an identity theft protection company which publishes the CEO's social security number on its website, himself was a victim of financial fraud. Back in July of 2007, a man in Texas was able to secure a $500 loan from a payday loan company using the CEO's widely publicized SSN. Will this latest incident finally prove that identity theft is real, and that publishing your own financial info is an invitation for fraud?"
If you give personal information away freely, is it really accurate to call taking it theft?
Of course, what defrauders do with it might constitute stealing. But that's less "identity theft" and more "money theft" if you ask me.
...but is it art?
That was a pretty arrogant move, even for his standards, and I'm sure he's be humbled (somewhat) after being taken down a peg. I guess that's the price you pay for overconfidence.
How in hell is this possible?
Isn't your bank the only institution able to transfer money out of your account? Don't you have to show your ID? Don't you have to sign some documents???
My opinion is ID theft is only possible because the clerks in the banks are too lazy to check for an ID or a signature. Whenever you go to a bar in the US, they will look at your ID before they serve booze, but if you set up a $xxxx account/load no one will ever check it. This is just how ridiculous the system is. Account number without proof of identity should be as useless as a car without gas.
The information he gave out was the same information a person gives out when they hand over a check. It's analogous to a pundit loudly proclaiming that it is perfectly safe to walk around outside. This is then demonstrated by walking through a large crowd of people. Somebody decides to prove otherwise & stabs them in a non-lethal manner solely to illustrate the point.
I hear this all the time, usually from Anonymous Cowards too scared to say something so anti-American in public. So I always rebut it, because I understand America, rights and government.
America is built on the simple, but radical (for the 1780s, anyway) realization that people have rights, create governments to protect those rights, so when we create them, we must create them with powers to protect them, but not to abuse them. We have a right to privacy, as the 4th Amendment says. The government exists to protect it,
Or are you going to tell me that, say, the 13th Amendment banning slavery limits only the government from owning slaves? No, freedom is a right. Rights are inalienable, not just "inalienable by the government".
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make install -not war
I think this is possible only because people confuse information about an identity with that identity, and therefore believe that knowledge of that information proves that the person is who they say they are.
I think there's way too many people and organizations with legitimate access to all kinds of information about me for me to consider that my SSN (or an account number that's printed on every statement that goes through the mail, or 16+4+3 digits on a credit card) is a good shared secret between me and my bank (or employer, or anyone.) Then, there's all the people who have illegitimate access.
We still use this because... it works "well enough." Banks make enough that they can cover the loss from a few fraudulent loans. And a person having to clean up a credit record is a PITA, but it's doable. And it's an externality from the bank's perspective.
Thinking about this, I don't have a real solution. It's advisable to guard your psudo-secrets, when you can. A law or two to help this might help, but not get rid of the problem. Until someone comes up with a good identifier[1], we're stuck with it.
[1] For values of "good identifier" that include a way that one person can prove they are the same person who established the good credit / made the bank deposit / whatever, including letting someone act as a limited agent of another (so the power company can take my electricity bill out of my account, but not let a rogue employee take all my money and buy Enron stock) and also doesn't let someone establish multiple identities with which to keep ripping off banks and others.
Okay this article mentions:
/. comment moderation is badly broken. Burn Karma! Burn!
1) Identity theft
2) A celebrity who holds extreme views on a wide range of topics of interest to nerds, from the environment to computers and identiity theft.
3) The celebrity has changed his mind on the topic after being proven wrong by a very cheeky identity thief.
4) That celebrity presents a show that does interest nerds. (Not just the cars either. One episode showed a car being blown off the tarmac by a 747's engine thrust).
How is this not news? How is this not interesting?
Yet a comment like yours gets modded as insightful instead of -1:troll. More proof that
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer