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Corporation’s Inadequacy leads to identity theft…
By karen | February 13, 2008
Seems to me like even more progress could be made (stopping identity theft, or at least its devastating effects) by holding responsible those agencies that open accounts fraudulently. Websites [government run or otherwise] that post “public” records online, are only making it easier for people to access such records from anywhere in the world. I don’t see that as the root of the problem, since these records are “public” anyway. If credit reporting agencies and/or banks, stores, or any other agency that extends credit were to take responsible and *effective* measures to guarantee that person “A” is who they claim to be… anyone should be able to give out their social security number like candy with no way for anyone to fraudulently *use* that information.
Let’s face it- there’s no way to eliminate company’s and agencies from exposing personal information in error…but I don’t hear much about lawmakers writing laws that would require banks and credit agencies to take responsibility for [their] opening accounts in error due to fraud.
There will always be fraud, and there will always be exposure of personal information- but if the criminals can’t *use* that information, the devastating effects of identity theft will lessen.
Personally, I place the blame on the credit reporting agencies. Luckily I live in a state that has a law allowing me to freeze my credit report proactively -I don’t need to become an ID theft victim first. It still amazes me that I need a law to allow me to control how a for-profit agency broadcasts my personal information to any other company for the right price!
To add insult to injury, many credit reporting agencies foster an atmosphere of fear -and entice people to sign up (for a fee) for credit report monitoring services. While I’m all for monitoring ones credit report, it’s my belief these are the very same agencies that take no responsibility for providing information fraudulently. Or- to put it a different way, they take no responsibility for providing information to other people & agencies without properly *authenticating* to whom they’re exposing your information.
Really!! Is *that* essentially all we have to do? That’s a rhetorical question, but it illustrates a powerful weapon against identity theft. It’s in the best interest of the reporting agencies to protect your information, because if everyone were to place a fraud alert (or better yet, a credit freeze) on their report… they would begin to lose money! It’s the trafficking of our credit information that generates their revenue, yet they seem to me to turn a blind eye to the protection of the information they handle.
When will these agencies (and others) take responsibility and short-circuit the ID theft problem at its source?
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