Comment by turc1656 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by turc1656 | Hacker News Reader

"The term ‘Identity Theft’ implies, and its usage accepts, that the person whose identity is being stolen is the victim. They’re almost always not."

Flat out wrong. They nearly always are. They frequently have their credit impacted as a result of non-payments for credit, mortgages, etc. Also, I see "identity theft" as a subset of theft by conversion: https://definitions.uslegal.com/t/theft-by-conversion/ "Theft by conversion occurs when someone wrongfully uses property or funds of another for their own purposes." A person's name, SSN, address, financial history, credit rating, etc. are all their property. And it is being used without their consent and in blatant violation of other laws that already exist. They clearly are a victim (but not the only victim) of these illegal acts.

Also, let's not forget that it typically takes an enormous amount of time and effort to fully undo the damage. That time alone has a cost - and it has been forcefully taken from the person whose identity has been stolen by the perpetrator(s) of these crimes.

I think you're proving the authors point by misunderstanding it. Using the term 'Identity Theft' buys into the way that the corporations involved want us to think about the credit market. It allows them to take a crime against them and allow it to blow back against someone that was not a party to the fraud. But what the Equifax hack is now forcing people to confront is that no consumer is able to keep their information private. The system won't allow it. So forcing consumers to be in any way culpable for what is actually fraud against the corporation that is extending credit is wrong and we need to adjust our terminology to make this explicit.

All the pain that you're noting is imposed by the credit system, not the criminal who's "stealing" your identity. We're not victims of the criminal's crime, we're victims of the system's response to that crime. And that's an important distinction. The fact that we treat identity theft any different than if the bank (or other credit-extending institution) was defrauded/robbed through some other means (confidence scheme, armed robbery, etc) isn't correct and if we, as consumers, expect that situation to change, we need to reject biased terminology that frames the issue in the light that the corporations want it to be framed.

Your identity wasn't stolen, the bank was defrauded due to insufficient authentication procedures. When you say it that way, it becomes ridiculous that the consumer should have to endure the ordeal that they currently do.

The point here isn't that the targets of identity theft don't suffer, the point is that the institutions facilitating the fraud are the true perpetrators of the damage and that calling it "identity theft" makes it sound like the perpetrator is the person committing the fraud.

The goal is to make it clear that when a bank allows someone to falsely represent themselves as me, the bank suffers, not me. They're the ones who messed up.

I think you miss the point. Sure if I have my identity stolen bad things happen to me, but I am not the victim of the crime. The bank is. Someone has defrauded the bank and stolen money from them; the bank then turns around and says, no, the money was not stolen from the bank, it was stolen from you. In reality, if the bank gives someone else my money, this is fraud. This is theft. The bank is under contract to give my money to only me, and they have broken this contract. So either they have given the thief their own money (which means someone has committed fraud against the bank, with no relation to me at all) or they have given someone else my money (which means the bank has defrauded me and stolen from me). The only way I am a victim of 'identity theft' is if we allow the bank to decide the money they gave away to some random person actually belonged to me; they should not be able to do this. It is identical to the bank withdrawing money from my account and reporting it as corporate profit, fraud and theft. There are two possibilities: I am the victim and the bank is the perpetrator of fraud, or the bank is the victim and the thief is the perpetrator of fraud. 'Identity theft' as a phrase suggests a ridiculous notion, that the thief is the perpetrator and I am the victim, which suggests I am somehow related to someone who happened to rob my bank.

> Flat out wrong. They nearly always are. They frequently have their credit impacted as a result of non-payments for credit, mortgages, etc...

> ...let's not forget that it typically takes an enormous amount of time and effort to fully undo the damage

Yes, In-fact the only real damage to the so called "victim" is credit rating... ironic since the Equifax leak, really it just outlines that credit reports are not trustworthy due to:

    A) High error rate.

    B) Integrating shortcomings of corporations.

    C) A multiplier of above through data breaches.

None of which are the "victims" fault. Credit-reports are now rightfully meaningless and "Identity Theft" was never easier to argue as a misnomer to a subcategory of fraud... the business being defrauded, as the true victim, held accountable for losses from incompetence.

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