[FDE] Stealing credit card numbers from corporate computers is a serious crime, but it is not “identity theft.”
Ali, Saqib
"No one’s “identity” is being stolen, but the use of the term to
describe every financial fraud involving a computer amps up the terror
level of consumers who largely have nothing to fear. The vast
majority of “real” identity theft has nothing to do with computers at
all, but rather begins with a stolen or lost wallet, stolen or simply
discarded mail, or inside jobs pulled by clerks and others with
legitimate access to the data.
The real problems are on the back-end, where credit card systems are
left insufficiently secured, or where laptops with sensitive data are
left in the back seats of cars where they are stolen not for the data
but for the hardware. We keep hearing horror stories of government
employees, university officials, and private sector employees who
can’t even be bothered to put password protection on their logins, let
alone encrypt their data. And the continued use of social security
numbers by private enterprises both as a customer ID and an
authentication field is probably the most dangerous practice of all.
[A]s long as consumers are being misdirected to think it’s their
behavior that needs to be controlled, the financial services industry
can avoid solving their largely self-made problems."
Read more:
http://larrydownes.com/the-persistent-myths-of-identity-theft/
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