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doix

This is what I don't understand when it comes to identify theft. Why is it the customers problem and not the companies?

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I've always agreed with David Mitchell's take:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/25/identi...

And here's the sketch referenced in the article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

This should be the first comment on any "identity theft" story to change the onus of proof narrative amongst the populous.

the term itself "identity theft" is part of the propaganda - instead of calling it "bank fraud" suddenly it's my problem because my identity has been stolen? no it hasn't, I'm still me. it's not my problem a bank got scammed by someone pretending to be me

Identity theft framing helps customers understand they have a responsibility in using these systems in a secure way. If you call it bank fraud, customers don’t see their part in the responsibility, and become careless, increasing the chance of bank fraud,

And by calling it identity theft instead of bank fraud, the reverse effect is had on the common perception of who has responsibility when dealing with an incident. You can have your “””identity stolen””” at a bank without an ounce of carelessness on your end.

That doesn’t scan for me. We call it car theft and thousands of cars are stolen every day that are properly locked and parked, even in the owners driveway.

Banks are notorious for adopting new technology at a glacial pace, often only when forced to do so.

Witness the adoption of chip and pin in the U.S. oh wait, we still haven’t properly adopted it and a stolen card can just be tapped on the terminal of most retailers in 2024 with no additional authentication.

This is the real problem though. It's literally the money form of "password on paper" if you have such a card. Not that I have experience, but I'd assume the largest part of scams comes down to this, easily stolen and used credit card info. Like it's still 2014.

Many more would be stolen if customers wouldn’t lock their cars. Customer awareness doesn’t prevent it, but it does reduce it.

As a responsible consumer, how do I prevent Equifax and AT&T from distributing my information?

Actually, when someone signed up for a Bank of America checking account with my AT&T information, I notified AT&T once I was done with BofA... And AT&T ignored it, until 2 years later.

Whatever BS shreading and information hygeine I do amounts to nothing when a big company lets stuff out. Or when my employer's HR person keeps unencrypted payroll files on a USB drive in their car in SF.

That's an especially hard pickle to be in when your bank sells transaction information to Equifax and won't let you opt out.

Relevant Michell & Webb comedy audio: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

Probably because there would be a way to exploit such a policy. You’re a normal, honest person, so you think “Why wouldn’t the bank believe me? I would only claim I lost my money through fraud if it were true.”

But the bank also has to deal with dishonest people who might make fraudulent claims about being defrauded.

This is also why credit card companies refuse to work with porn - there are an immense number of people who charge back porn purchases almost immediately.

This doesn't justify putting all the responsibility on the innocent person whose money got stolen by fraud. The fraudster didn't get money from the innocent person. They got it from the bank. That should make it the bank's problem.

If the bank is concerned about fraudulent claims about being defrauded, that's just another case of them needing to improve their fraud detection process.

You're focusing on compensation to victim (and that becoming a new fraud mechanism). Instead, try focusing on what the banks could do to decrease the actual crime. Some examples:

US banking is notoriously sloppy about allowing withdrawals with just knowledge of routing number and bank account number, while every check written contains both numbers -- in Europe, the bank account number can only be used to transfer money to the account (and checks practically don't exist).

One day out of the blue, some hundreds of dollars were transferred out of my American bank account, seeming to claim purchases in a city several hours away. I didn't authorize such transactions. They were direct debits of my account, not credit card charges. A few days later, my money was returned. How was that possible? Why did the bank agree to transfer money out of my account?

All the way back in the 90s, my European bank gave me a one-time codebook, to be used in addition to username and password to authenticate online transfers. Whenever I was close to running out of codes, they gave me a new codebook. Managing to steal my password wouldn't have let an attacker easily empty my account.

My European bank in a small city, that I had been a customer of for decades, and whose employee that I was interacting with being a family friend, verified my passport before discussing a loan.

Yes, the situation in Europe is much better, even more so after the introduction of PSD2 which requires strong customer authentication and is specifically designed to avoid (or at least minimize..) identity fraud.

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