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Comment by -Fu

18 hours ago

It’s not the five minutes that I balk at, it’s entrusting a third party with all they need to steal my identity. But of course, they’ll never get hacked…

It's not like Anthropic is the only company in the world that would have the basic details contained on a driver's license or passport. Odds are all of the PII required for someone to steal your identity is already in criminal hands.

The National Public Data breach alone exposed the social security numbers of potentially upwards of 100 million Americans. Numerous companies have literally "all" of your personal data and you never did business with them/gave it to them directly.

It's not right but the identity theft cat is out of the bag, which is why precautions like credit freezes, are recommended for all Americans.

And to me, it's specifically that that third party is Peter Thiel. Not the guy I want to trust with my data.

How can someone steal your identity? What does that even mean?

  • It is a legal fiction invented by corporations to pass the blame onto you when criminals convinces the companies to give them money in your name.

  • Where possible, I believe it's our duty to educate those who know or care little about how their devices work. Unfortunately stats aren't persuasive for my family, but they might be for some as a starting point.

    https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/victims-identity-th...

    Victims of Identity Theft, 2021

    October 2023, NCJ 306474

    https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/vit21.pdf

    • These links claim that identities are stolen, but do not explain how.

      What happens to the victims, who are now presumably left unidentifiable? How are they tracked if they can’t be identified? Do their families recognise them? How does that work if they were married, had children or something? Does the identity thief just take over their whole life?

      As far as I know, “identity theft” is a boogeyman invented by the banks. Traditionally, when someone would go to a bank and get a loan by pretending to be another person, we just called it “fraud”.

      The banks realised that it would be nice to get you to feel some responsibility when they get defrauded, so after a bunch of focus grouping they came up with this new term to imply that you are somehow also a victim when the bank gets defrauded by someone else.

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