The law shouldn't be that someone else has to pay the costs, the law should be that you tell them to prove it was you that acted to open an account and they go pound sand if they can't do that.
> Libel is a method of defamation expressed by print, writing ... that is injurious to a person's reputation, ... or injures a person in his/her business or profession.
Might even be able to get punitive damages.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/libel
Note, the person who "had their identity stolen" (that phrasing is an absurdity, twisted language designed to obscure and defraud the truth) was never a party to the deal. The only parties relevant here are the bank and the person that defrauded the bank. The only victim is the bank. Nobody here is arguing that this problem doesn't exist for real people, we're saying that it's insane that it even exists at all.
> (e) Limitation of liability
> ... no consumer may bring any action or proceeding in the nature of defamation, ... or negligence with respect to the reporting of information against any ... person who furnishes information to a consumer reporting agency ... except as to false information furnished with malice or willful intent to injure such consumer.
Sure, but I meant if they're reporting you to a credit agency for owing money or whatever. That is them publishing false information about you that will have negative consequences for you.
Nordstrom was the only proactive party they called me immediately when they noticed someone filing out a credit card application in another state.
If a bank extends credit to someone without doing their due diligence, they’ve definitely been defrauded but that’s between them and the crook, not the person the crook was claiming to be.
Since all those false reports ("identity thefts") are never willful on the part of banks and other lenders, there is almost no penalties that can be brought. The consumer bringing the most reasonable charge of libel against a credit bureau is specifically prohibited by this law, if the credit bureaus follow all of the rules (allowing people to see their reports, removing false info (good luck with that), etc.). If not a case of regulatory capture at the time, then at least this law needs to be updated given how important credit reports have become, how easy fraudsters can get your report tarnished, and how hard it is to get your reports corrected.
Imagine a world where banks have to pay you for identity theft protection so that you're more "diligent" about not going to phishing websites.
That being said, none of the compromises described in the comment chain thus far required action on the part of the consumer; they all involved compromises of third-party companies. Like T-Mobile.
new account is in person only
This falls under the general heading of "remote attestation" technology (as the person I am replying to probably already knows).
Being poor is incredibly expensive and exhausting.
That argument would only make sense in the U.S.
But I believe there are also lots of well-intentioned but bad regulations, and so they need to be considered carefully!
I don't think I accept that premise.
My argument is that the party that can actually do something about the fraud is the one that should feel the pain of dealing with it.
It's likely possible to quantify the effects, regulators could do that and strike a sensible balance between security requirements and so on.
It may harm the rich the most, in my opinion, since retailers wouldn’t as easily be able to trick you into a new credit card as part of the checkout process.
Poor people are more often in less stable living situations and it's easier to lose track of documentation. Not to mention unhoused people who don't have a safe place to keep track of things either and often don't have up to date identification in the first place. Also, with less access to the internet to do things remotely it's more common to need to take time off work to go to a physical branch which may be very far away, requiring taking multiple busses just to prove their identity.
Of course adding more security is important, but it has tradeoffs like this that harm the poor that need to be considered.
Going even further, nobody would actually complain if someone hijacked their identity and improved their credit score with good behavior!
This is probably much more common than people being framed or having issues proving their identity.
Unfortunately, the US government doesn't take identity theft seriously from a criminal prosecution perspective. At least not when it's affecting regular Americans.
More than 20 years later, I still have to pay for credit monitoring services because sometimes I’ll see stuff from the 1990s resurface and I have a backlog of documents that I have to deal with to get stuff straightened out.
When I moved to Seattle a few years ago, suddenly my credit report was empty. As in totally blank. I didn’t have any open credit cards at the time (personal choice; I’ve sense had a change of heart and have embraced trying to use credit cards to my advantage, always paying them off each month), but it showed nothing. Which was weird for a person in her 30s. This made renting an apartment difficult, despite having nearly double the required income. It turns out, when removing false claims off the report for the umpteenth time, everything was erased. I eventually got that sorted out but I still have no idea if my credit report is actually accurate, except that my score is in the 800s now thanks to said credit cards.
The only upside is that I’ve become so desensitized to the entire process that every time Equifax or some big database is hacked, I’m almost blasé about it. I’ve gone through this so many times, I know the drill. I know the time sink. I know the process. Whatever.
But insurance doesn’t solve that. It’ll cover the cost of the monitoring services and maybe some legal costs in the event you have to actually take something to court, but it won’t recover the time you have to deal with the insurer or the agencies themselves. In fact, I’d gladly pay a fee if it meant that not only would my shit be monitored, but someone would sit on the phone and submit all the paperwork on my behalf. Because that’s the part that is the most infuriating.