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."

Comments

It's even worse than a job

[Drakkenmensch]

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.

Re:It's even worse than a job

[bsDaemon]

I grew up in a fairly small town. I've had my checking account with the same bank since I was 18. Of the tellers there, one I went to high school with and she used to live across the street from me. The rest of the tellers and other officers have known my parents for a long, long time. When I go there, they know me fairly well. If I had a major issue, I'd drive the hour and a half home to go to that bank where they know and trust me, and I'd probably get taken care of properly. That's probably not typical, but I feel better about my ability to get my banking information taken care of than I do about being able to get a new job in this economy.

I have a university degree, certifications, and experience and I really don't think I could find a new job "within a couple of hours," at least not one that would be on par with my current position with regards to pay and benefits. Maybe that was true a few years ago, but not right now. However, with the amount of credit and background checks that go on industries like mine and positions where trust is an absolute requirement, having my identity stolen and my credit screwed up would definitely affect my ability to get a new job if I couldn't get it taken care of quickly and conclusively. That's probably on the mind of most of the people who said that they're more concerned about identity theft than their job.

Re:It's even worse than a job

[Kepesk]

Hah, agreed. I have friends with normally in-demand skills who have been looking for a job for a year.

I once fell for a cleverly-crafted internet scam. The ten minutes it took for me to get my bank card canceled felt like my boss had pulled me into the office and chewed me out. So.... I'd say this is about accurate.

Re:It's even worse than a job

[mcgrew]

Maybe you can, but the last time I was out of work I was unemployed for a year before I found a new job. That was over 20 years ago, it would be even harder for me to find one now because I'm getting on in years; at least, one that would pay the bills. In case you haven't noticed, one in ten people are collecting unemployment benefits, and probably twice that many are unemployed but not recieving benefits (thay don't count those folks).

Re:It's even worse than a job

[delinear]

Completely agree - I'd say the combination of people having lived through a relative boom and not having the anguish of trying to find a job during an economic downturn couple with the media hysteria about identity theft no doubt account for people's worries being misplaced in this way. For most people "identity theft" means a few troublesome calls to the bank to sort it out - in many cases the bank does all the legwork (I had a call from my bank to alert me a site that took a payment from my card had some data compromised, they cancelled my card and sent me a new one within a couple of days and I didn't have to lift a finger). Cases where identity theft led to the loss of your home must be incredibly rare or we'd be hearing about them all the time in the media which loves reporting on this, cases of people losing their home because they couldn't find a new job are all too common.

Re:It's even worse than a job

[Skuld-Chan]

Sometimes its no so easy to find a new job - I looked for a year until I found the job I have now. I make like 19k a year where I used to make 80k :/.

That insecurity is rather frightening - when I lost the lease on my house if I didn't have a safety net (living with friends) I would have been able to live off savings/unemployment insurance, but after that I'd have to live out of my car.

And yet..

[Haedrian]

And yet I'm positive many have no anti-virus,put lots of interesting information on their facebook or whatever, and click interesting links.

Re:And yet..

[russotto]

Exactly. On a survey, people may claim they they are "extremely concerned" about the potential loss of their personal information, but their actions say otherwise; they'll enter their personal information anywhere if it will get them dancing bunnies. On the other hand, most people are pretty careful about doing obviously stupid stuff which could lose them their job. If people really cared so as little about losing their job as they did about losing their financial information, they'd not only use the copier on their butts and surf porn on company time, they'd hit on the boss's daughter, call in sick 3 days out of 5, get into fistfights with their coworkers, and brag about shorting their company's stock.

And yet....

[sdo1]

... those same people will continue to use their pet's name as the password to their online bank account.

-S

Re:And yet....

[vlm]

To be fair many organizations that use security questions limit the customer to a set of canned questions. In those cases you can only choose between your pet's name, the street of your first home or your mother's maiden name.

Since there is (usually?) no human review, what exactly stops you from reporting your pets name was slfdasghblasfhdbgas or perhaps your street name was adfjklashd? Or for that matter, "Sally" even though my moms name was not Sally?

Re:Time to act

[tophermeyer]

Facebook and Google are pretty open about the fact that they are not interested in protecting privacy. They are building their business models on the assumption that society understands and accepts this.

If people disagree, they are free not to use their services. If I don't want people to see "hot donkey nuts" on my Google search history, then I shouldn't be searching for hot donkey nuts in Google. If you do not want future employers to see pictures of you doing kegstands, do not post them on Facebook.

People need to take responsibility for protecting their own privacy. Facebook and Google make their dollars by organizing and selling your data. If you do not want them to publish your data, do not give it to them.

Re:Makes sense.

[Seumas]

Like with most things, 54% of Americans are extremely concerned about the safety of their data, but maybe 1% actually bother to do something about it.

Had my age and hair color stolen, was terrible

[noidentity]

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.

Re:this story isn't about amnesia

[AltairDusk]

The problem is not the information itself, the problem is what a thief can do with that information. Since you seem to be hinting at the copyright debate tell me: How can I harm someone using the information found in a song? That song/movie/software/etc does not allow me to sign up for credit cards, loans, bank accounts and more in the author's name. If I steal your identity I can rack up all kinds of debt in your name leaving you to foot the bill or prove it wasn't you that bought all those things.

It seems to me that while most of the focus in preventing identity theft is on preventing access to this information in the first place a second avenue for addressing the problem is mostly ignored. It is far too easy to sign up for a credit card or other forms of credit while providing the bare minimum of proof that you are who you claim to be. If more effort was placed into ensuring identity before issuing the credit we could cut down the number and expense of identity theft cases.

Re:this story isn't about amnesia

[Kjella]

If I write a book and you take it and pretend that it's yours, most people would call that stealing. You're trying to take something away from me, the right to be recognized as the author. Having my personal information spread around doesn't make it identity theft, but trying to impersonate me does because only I should be recognized as myself. Though when it comes to immaterial things, fraud is probably the better word. However, identity fraud sounds like you are the one being defrauded, you're not. You're just the person whose identity was used.

Re:As a victim of identity theft...

[countertrolling]

You need to deal with... You need to prove... that...

We need to pas laws that make it their problem.. We should just be able to report it and that should be the end of it from our point of view. And we should shouldn't allow information to carry that kind of power to victimize us so easily.. The problem won't go away until we do that... This is the banks/credit agencies/governments'(ours) fault that this is happening at all. We shouldn't tolerate it.