Re: An Unsettling Surprise: Victimized by ID Theft

IN MY OPINION
> The irony of my experience is that I am a computer-security > professional. I make my living helping organizations secure their > information systems from break-ins and theft. ...

While there are good points in here, it sounds like a back-handed advertisement for his services.

As a security professional, he probably has the means to find out exactly how his identity was stolen and the account set up, but he didn't elaborate in detail. I think that detail is important to share with us lay people, especially on an actual case.

When I called the police to report this crime, the officer was blunt > about my predicament. He said police get hundreds of identity-theft > claims every week, and almost all of them go unpunished. And because > credit firms don't hold consumers liable, these crimes are considered > victimless.

This attitude on the part of law enforcement needs to be changed. It's been documented that this attitude is responsible for the growth since criminals know they'll get away with it. My local newspaper described how a used-car salesman would color-photocopy a buyer's driver's license then use it for fraudulent purposes. He was not aggressively prosecuted because the amount stolen was below their threshhold.

All crime has two components: motivation and opportunity. People must > be motivated to commit a crime and have the opportunity to do so. We > cannot do much about motivation, but we can surely do something about > opportunity.

Actually, us lay people can do NOTHING about 'opportunity'. I have no idea what big data warehouses handle my information, let alone dictate to them to maintain proper controls and security.

'Motivation' is a tougher challenge, but must be addressed as well. All the locks in the world won't stop a determined thief. We need to know (1) who are the perpetrators of these thefts and (2) what will be truly effective deterrents. I suspect they know it's very hard to get caught, let alone sent to prison, from doing this kind of thing. Society is much more focused on 'violent' crime. If you use a gun to steal $100 you'll be in worse trouble than using a PC to steal $10,000. Being robbed at gunpoint is very traumatic but people will recover and the property loss manageable. Being robbed secretly of 'identity' is equally traumatic and a lot tougher to recover--the theft keeps coming back day after day with more bad news arriving in the mail.