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.
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.
I would maybe reframe it as fraud being a natural downstream effect of identity theft. I don't need to steal anyone's identity to forge a check but that's also categorized as fraud.
Identity theft also paints a clearer picture of what is required to remedy the situation. If your details have been pwnd hard enough, you might need to get new government documents entirely in order to protect yourself long term.
If a contractor takes my money to install a pool and then disappears, I don't need to reset my entire financial identity. I think it's worth having a separate idea to describe the situation as a whole and not just the specific vector in which a crime might have been committed.
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.
I would maybe reframe it as fraud being a natural downstream effect of identity theft. I don't need to steal anyone's identity to forge a check but that's also categorized as fraud.
Identity theft also paints a clearer picture of what is required to remedy the situation. If your details have been pwnd hard enough, you might need to get new government documents entirely in order to protect yourself long term.
If a contractor takes my money to install a pool and then disappears, I don't need to reset my entire financial identity. I think it's worth having a separate idea to describe the situation as a whole and not just the specific vector in which a crime might have been committed.
1 reply →