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Loss of Personal Info As Stressful As Losing a Job
An anonymous reader writes "Americans feel most vulnerable about the loss or theft of their personal or financial information, according to a national survey. 54% of Americans said the prospect of losing this data 'extremely concerned' them. Losing personal or financial information ranked similar to concern over job loss and not being able to provide healthcare for their family. In terms of specific risks within the online threat landscape, identity theft ranked as the chief fear. Nearly a third of Americans reported identity theft as their greatest concern to personal safety and security on the Internet. The fear of someone hacking into their financial information or accounts ranked a close second, with a quarter of Americans listing it as their greatest worry."
You can get a new job within hours of losing the old one. You can't get banks and the police to trust you again THAT quickly after your identity's been abused to commit frauds.
I'd say those that AREN'T worried have a screw loose. Or ten.
To much anime is bad for the brain...desu.
Sorry. Couldn't help it.
And yet I'm positive many have no anti-virus,put lots of interesting information on their facebook or whatever, and click interesting links.
... those same people will continue to use their pet's name as the password to their online bank account.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Losing your wallet sucks?
Must be a slow news day
There's Lifelock to help you. Or that other one, or that other one. And if you forget about them and how stressful it can be to loose ALL YOUR PERSONAL DATA AND ABILITY TO LIVE A NORMAL LIFE EVER AGAIN there will be an ad on the TV and radio in the next 5 minutes and you'll probably see many ads for their services today during your regular browsing.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
...that answering alarming questions in these seemingly endless "which is the most stressful thing that can happen to you?" surveys, raises the participants' stress levels.
IL is baning credit checks for most jobs and bad credit can come from getting sicks and running big bills with or without benefits.
Send this link to the following people:
- Facebook CEO, who said that the meaning of the word privacy is changing thanks to Facebook and that the need for and expectation of privacy on the Internet should be and will be a thing of the past.
- Google CEO, who said that if you don't want other people to know about something you do, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
These people need to realize that respecting and protecting privacy of their users is mandatory, not a thing of the past.
As a victim of identity theft and someone who has lost his job in the past, I can say that, in many ways, identity theft is more stressful. If you lose a job, you need to worry about not having money and you need to find another job. Once you find a job, though, that worry goes away (or at least goes back to normal levels).
When your identity is stolen, your information is now "out there." Even if the thief is captured (unlikely), he might have shared the information with a dozen other people or have purchased the information from someone who sold it to other people. This means that plugging one leak doesn't end the stress as other leaks could pop up at any time.
In addition, you don't merely need to deal with one company (ala getting hired). You need to deal with at least three big credit agencies that really don't care if your identity was stolen. You need to prove to them that they have the wrong information on file. You might also need to deal with collection agencies who really don't care that you're not the one who bought that boat in Florida and the stereo equipment in California. You might also need to deal with credit card companies who (like the credit agencies) really only care about their profits and don't see your identity theft claim as "profitable." Then there's dealing with police officers who, while they might be well-meaning, really have no training to deal with these crimes and possibly no jurisdiction for the crimes.
With all that stress, it's a good thing the FBI has made Identity Theft a top priority. Oh, wait, they haven't.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The American public has gotten really jaded about losing their job.
How do you "lose" your personal info?
If someone makes a copy, you still have all your info, so you haven't really lost anything, right?
Isn't that what many folks here have been telling us? If you download data, it's just a copy. You're not depriving the owner of any property, so it isn't theft.
How is making a copy of your SSN or other identifying information theft or loss? Data wants to free, right?
I wonder what percentage of Americans are worried about loosing their intellectual property?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/08/10/216252/FBI-Prioritizes-Copyright-Over-Missing-Persons
http://xkcd.com/327/
I'm feeling a lot better, thank you very much. Losing my personal info would royally stink.
Is did you contact your representatives in government? Imperfect as it is, our government is an approximation of what they people want. However part of that means the people have to participate, and tell the government what is important to them. Doesn't mean they always listen, and if they don't we vote them out and replace them with those that do. However if you don't even try then nothing can happen.
So you need to let them know that this is an issue that has affected you, and that they need to be dealing with. Tell them how serious it is both on a personal level and how many people are being affected. Tell them you want them to have the FBI make this a priority.
I don't expect that a single letter will cause them to jump to action, but they'll listen. If all the victims of identity theft contact congress and say "This is a real problem that needs fixing," they'll say "This is something that affects a lot of our voters, we need to do something about it!" If all the victims sit in silence, or only speak on forums, the government may well not understand it is important.
If you did contact your reps then good for you, however I am well aware of how rare that is, particularly among the tech crowd.
One day I woke up to find that my age and hair color had been stolen. It was awful walking around being ageless and having hair with no color. Fortunately, I found that an ex-friend had stolen, and took them back from him. I could never figure out what use he had for them, but it's nice to have them back.
Most people do not take their informational security seriously. Now that's fine if it doesn't concern you. While I think it should concern you, I can understand not spending a lot of time on something that doesn't. For example I am not concerned about nuclear war, so I do not spend any time taking steps to protect myself in the event of one.
However people ARE concerned, but then aren't willing to take steps to secure it. I'll even tell people what to do, like run a virus scanner, use a good password, get a SecureID if your bank offers one (some do, B of A does), only post stuff on FB you are willing to make public and so on. However I get blown off. They want to be protected, but don't want to have to lift a finger to do so.
Where I really see this shit is in World of Warcraft. Some people get hacked all the damn time. While a few just don't care, most throw a fit and get all upset. Well I know for a fact that if you get hacked, 999 times out of 1,000, it is because your informational security sucks. You went to a scam site (places that pretend to get you in to the beta and so on) or got spywared or have a weak password or share the password with half the world. However they never seem willing to deal with it. They don't want to run a virus scanner because it "Slows things down too much." They won't get an authenticator (two factor authentication device) because "It can be hacked," (it can't actually). They won't stop sharing their password because "My friends need to use my account."
Basically they want someone to protect them, but they are unwilling to do the slightest bit to change how they work. They don't want to take any responsibility or action.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to hunt down all the hackers out there and get rid of them, but as any law enforcement official can tell you for any crime, there's no way to eliminate it 100%. We can't get rid of all the criminals so you have to take it upon yourself to try and protect yourself and your things. If your car gets stolen, I want to see the thief tracked down and prosecuted. However I'm still going to call you a retard if you left it unlocked with the keys in it. No the thief shouldn't have stolen it, but you shouldn't have made it so damn easy.
Unless this survey was anonymous this is far too ironic.
I think what Google said is they see an end to anonymity, not privacy, which is very different.
I have privacy in my house. Only I and people I choose to let in can be here, and I can do pretty much as I please. People can't spy on me, they can't see what I'm doing, what I'm wearing, and so on. It is a nice private sanctum for me. However I am not anonymous in my house. It is well known who owns it, you can check public records to see though you could much easier just check a phone book. My comings and going can be monitored, so you can have a pretty good idea if I'm home or not. I have no anonymity when it comes to my house, but that does not affect the privacy of my house.
That seems to be what they are claiming. That you'll be able to be private in what you do, but not totally anonymous, as in the government can find out who you are if needed.
Now without commenting on if this is a good thing over all, it would certainly lead to a much better ability to solve crimes committed online, like identity theft. Part of the reason it is so popular is because of the anonymous nature of online. It is easy to simply disappear and become untraceable. Means there is little risk in committing a crime online. Eliminate that anonymity, and that goes away.
People need to understand that privacy and anonymity are unique concepts. One means the ability to keep information to yourself, to only have some things known about you. The other means to be invisible, unknown, that while your actions might be known the person behind them is not.
Having sex in your bedroom is private, but not anonymous. People can know that you and a partner are in the same house, but not what you are doing. Having sex in a park while wearing masks is anonymous, but not private. People don't know who is doing it, but they sure as hell know what is happening.
Clearly it is the lenders fault they lent money without proper verification. Unless the lenders can prove that they lent money to the correct party they should not be able to post "outstanding credit" on my name. The lenders lobby to make sure that I can't even freeze my own credit lines. Only if I am a victim of id theft I get to freeze my own credit lines. Or they charge fees to "monitor" my credit lines. It is all screwed up. We should change the laws so that victims of id-theft can sue the lender who posted/reported wrong information about the victim for damages. We should be able to sue these lax lenders. Then they will spend more time in verifying the identity of the borrowers.
Knowing facts about me should never be enough to harm me.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
One option might be something ultra-obscure, not prone to dictionary attacks, but "locatable" on emergency. I had a password set to fhqwhgads for a while.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You don't have to be a police chief to know...
I know most here don't care about that, since few have a LIFE, but I do.
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j/k, no life at all - I'm here aren't I?
Both situations involve losing control of an aspect of your life.
When you lose your job, it's a problem but if you have savings and you have marketable skills, then there's at least something you can do about it.
If you're the victim of identity theft, there's very little you can do about it. The information is out in the wild and it's extremely likely that the perpetrators will not be caught. People may well be using your identity for fraud for years.
Historically, people deposited their money at a "bank" so that the bank would keep it secure for them, allowing them to be ignorant of security best practices and specialize in something productive.
Today, banks have somehow absolved themselves of responsibility for security, and have convinced us all to blame the customer for lapses in security, so much that we even call it by the oxymoron "identity theft" without feeling any irony.
Banks should authenticate the transaction, and allow their customers to talk about their pets and mother's maiden name on Facebook without jeopardizing their account. But blaming the victim is easier, and we all seem to go along with it unquestioningly.
The last I heard, the average job search takes six months. I can get my bank cards, etc., cancelled within minutes of detecting their loss. I've had both things happen, and "identity theft" is a minor nuisance.
The claim that people are more stressed out by "identity theft" than by job loss is just not credible. If people were less worried about job loss than about personal information security, you'd see people blowing off work for a week, but you wouldn't see people using Facebook.
Seeing personal information about others has been very helpful to me, many, many times. I once wondered how people could afford so much, but that was before I learned just how far in debt many of them were. I thought people had amazingly good personal relationships, but I occasionally got to see otherwise. It brought the "high class rich people" down to a level where I no longer envied them. It made me realize that people really don't pay sticker price for cars. It made me realize that people wear false faces in public and are sometimes actually miserable in reality.
I am a very private person when it comes to personal information and finances, but I worry very little about what we traditionally think of as identity theft. I am, however, extremely concerned about the threat posed by requiring citizens to do business with health insurance companies, and associating that with a tax return and the IRS. I don't want medical providers to know my financial information, and they should not be able to ask for, obtain or store social security numbers. There is no more serious financial security threat that I can think of right now than forcing me to do business with anything related to the medical industry, or having to use medical care where it is a commodity that we are to avail ourselves of without knowing the price ahead of time. Never mind that a diagnosis or successful treatment might not come - knowing that we are giving blanket permission to be charged *whatever* seems rather foolhardy to me.