"Nice credit rating you have there. It'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it."

[unixronin]

Via mazianni:

There are obvious steps that credit companies could take which really would reduce the risk of identity theft – such as taking further measures to verify identity, reducing sales of personal data, using PINs, etc.  However, credit companies won’t support measures which reduce their own profits.  “Identity theft could be made as obsolete a crime as cattle rustling or high-seas piracy,” reported MONEY Magazine several years ago.  “…[It's] now possible to request a freeze on your credit report, stopping anyone from granting new credit without your approval.  Why isn’t this brutally simple and effective solution more widespread?  Simply put, it disrupts the free flow of credit information on which consumer lenders and data sellers depend.”

When credit companies play both sides of the game, there are reduced incentives for them to build secure systems.  Rather, they have found a way to profit from crime.  By fighting consumer protection measures and selling personal data, credit companies increase consumers’ risk of identity theft.  As long as credit companies can scare enough people into paying them for “protection,” they can actually make money from the results of their own recklessness – thus passing the costs of identity theft on to consumers or merchants, and reducing or even eliminating financial incentives for genuine, systematic improvements.

(Emphasis mine.)

In other news:

• Mission creep on the airlines, from the LA Times via bruce_schneier
• From SecurityWire, the costs of data breaches are rising.
• From the LA Times, although President Obama has signed an executive order to close Guantanamo, he's pretty much OK with the practice of "rendition".
• Bank of America apparently spent as much as $10 million of its Federal bailout money on an 850,000-square-foot Superbowl entertainment sideshow.
• And the latest Stupid Teen Prank:  Abusing Internet phone services to make spoofed 911 calls.  They call it "swatting", because they can usually get a SWAT team response against their randomly-chosen victims.  The last line in the article is ... well, the only question is whether the speaker is simply lying through his teeth, or stupid almost beyond belief.

(Oops.  Rendition article link fixed.)

Comments

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

The only way to stop the problem is to make the credit companies bear the full brunt of the cost of abuse. They will fight tooth and nail to prevent that. Until it happens, we will pay the cost, through merchant fees, interest rates, and bogus "security measures" for online account access. Do you think the Dems have the stones to take on the credit industry?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I don't think either the Democrats or the Republicans will ever directly take on the banking industry or any other major corporate bloc. They're all far too beholden to the corporate interests.

Sure, it's one man, one vote. But a fat wad of cash trumps almost any number of votes, and the voting public can't match corporate pockets (and even if just once they could, it'd set a precedent that'd leave us all screwed even worse).

[novel-tharkun.livejournal.com]

Isn't high seas piracy now the norm on the coast of Somalia?

Completely eliminating identity theft is unlikely something the banks can do even with help, as some identity theft is assisted by the victim. That more can be done is true, but how much of it is cost-value effective is not a question I can see a full answer for. The increase in cost to the banks for the failures is a good sign. Increasing the percentage of burden on the banks would also help. Absolving the victim of any responsibility leaves them open to game the system the other way.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Isn't high seas piracy now the norm on the coast of Somalia?

See also the South China Sea and Coral Sea.

And one of NZ's most famous sailors, Peter Blake, was killed by pirates on the Amazon. (Not the high seas, but still.)

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

As obsolete as cattle rustling or high-seas piracy, huh? Says the out-of-touch city-dweller.

So what he means is "only a major problem", then.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Heh, I read right past that. I'm guessing the writer wouldn't be as quick to dismiss piracy today. (Not that it was ever absent; it's just that it was only rife in Far Corners Of The World That American News Media Never Covers.)

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

The comments remind me of fruitylips's Pirate test. If it kills less people than pirates do every year, It Is Not A Problem.

(Please clean my keyboard for me. It's sticking.)