Identity theft
The term "identity theft" sounds absolutely ridiculous to me. My identity is what makes me me, how can someone steal that? In fact, the phrase seems more like a way for the credit card companies to be lazy. It provides them with a term to better exculpate themselves of any damage that occurs to your identity as a result of them thinking someone else is you. They can say someone stole my identity. A criminal might have committed the crime of impersonating someone else but did the credit card companies do everything they could to protect the victim? Who's really responsible for causing the blemish on the victims record?
Your credit card number is protected by what is commonly referred to in the computer industry as "security by obscurity". The term reflects the flaw of of trying to ensure the security of something by obscuring the method in which it's hidden. It's a lot like hiding a tin of money in your back yard. The security of the money is based on the hope that nobody knows where it's buried. It's better to put the money in a safe where everyone knows its location so that if there is a flaw in the safe, you'll hear about it before the criminals can exploit it. With credit card numbers, you're protected as long as criminals don't discover the hidden trick to generating these numbers. As it turns out, the trick to generating the credit card numbers is critical to validating them. As a result, there's a good chance that if you've written an online web form to validate credit cards, then you know how to generate credit cards too.
Another piece of information that holds the keys to this "identity" that criminals "steal" is our social security number. This number is even less secure than our credit card number. The number never changes and, if we're a student, can be found in our academic records; which are no where near as secure as our financial records.
One example of "identity theft" is opening a credit card using someone else's personal information. A criminal approaches a credit card company, provides them with information about the victim and is issued a card. A company called lifelock promises to protect your personal information against such violations. They charge a monthly fee for the service. The president Todd Davis is so confident in his company that he has published his social security number.
If the technology to protect us from "identity theft" is available then why don't we obligate credit card companies to implement the security themselves. How do we let them get away with tarnishing our reputation in order to save a couple bucks. It seems like their should be a class action lawsuit against them for failing to offer the sort of protection that Todd Davis seems to be profiting from.
"My Social Security number is 457-55-5462. And that is my real Social Security number." -Todd Davis