Identity Thieves Took My Wife for a Ride

nytimes.com

3 points·flowerlad··3 comments

Try this: Go to https://www.progressive.com/ start an auto quote. Type in your Date of Birth, and Home address. And watch as it fills in various fields for you. It immediately filled in the make and model of my car, it knows the name and age of my kid, and so on.

That my children's privacy is not protected is beyond outrageous. I have no business with Progressive and yet it knows my kids' names and ages?

I stopped at this point. I don't know what else it knows, but this is already outrageous.

Once upon a time, this was called impersonation. How did the change to "identity theft" happen, and why? Does anyone here know anything about that?

While identity theft involves impersonation, impersonation doesn’t always mean identity theft has occurred.

For instance, if someone puts your name and phone number on Craigslist and says that you are selling a 1918 Model T car, and then you get a lot of calls from people wanting to buy your Model T (which you don’t have)—well, that’s annoying, but it’s considered impersonation.

The impersonator didn’t cause any harm to your credit, steal your information in order to steal your money, or do anything to warrant the fines or jail sentence typical for identity thieves.

This is from https://cookattorneys.com/criminal-impersonation-and-identit...

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