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Comment by rr808 | Hacker News Reader

Is it actually a problem or are people just worrying about it? I dont see how a bank or court can enforce anything if you didn't do it.

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It's a major concern. When someone steals your identity, they can incur debts, commit crimes, and manipulate data under your name. Victims often spend extensive time and energy clearing up the aftermath. While it seems counterintuitive, banks and institutions usually hold you liable until you can definitively prove the activity wasn't yours. Essentially, in the realm of identity theft, it's often 'guilty until proven innocent' rather than the other way around

It's more like "you spent it until you can prove you didn't", which might be worse.

Sure I can guess that too. I haven't ever seen anyone with problems though. Does it really happen? Given that nearly every SSN and address has leaked you'd think it would be everywhere.

I had this experience after the Equifax hack a while ago when something like 100M+ people's info was stolen. Until I froze my credit I was getting phone calls every few days asking if I had _really_ tried to open some line of credit I had never heard of. The people calling me explained that ever since the Equifax hack they had to do a bunch more due diligence because all they were getting was fraud. No lines of credit were successfully opened in my name, and the issue stopped completely once I froze all my credit.

I think the lesson is when bad stuff happens you really don't want to be in the small minority of people who it is happening to. Once it's happening to everyone then the problem actually gets solved.

An example from last month. "Byron Bay breach victim told to pay Adidas, National Basketball Association $US1.2m by US courts" https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-25/byron-bay-data-breach...

In Australia.

In the Southern District of Florida, United States of America:

    But then she was charged in the United States with offences including trademark infringement, and was told to pay damages of $US1.2 million ($1.8 million).

Her 'bogo-debt' can still be sold for cents on the dollar to local (Australian) collecters who might haress her, future vacations to US STeates and Territories are now ill advised, etc.

That's odd, I'm in Pennsylvania and have had multiple fraudulent purchases with my accounts over the years. Every single time, the bank put the money back in my account within days and I never heard anything more about it.

fraudulent purchases are not identity theft.

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