[ale] OT: am I paranoid?

[Bjorn Dittmer-Roche]

Goerge, I don't mean to flame you, but identity theft is a serious problem
in this country. People go through mail, the web, and the trash to look
for little bits of info so they can take out loans in other people's
names. It takes very little info to do it and it can be quite lucritive to
take advantage of banks[1] and ruin people's credit. I admit that in this
case it is slightly paranoid -- noone would go to the effort described
here if they could just go through your garbage instead, but SSNs are used
unwisely all the time, and protesting their misuse DOES help educate
people and change policies (I have gotten policies changed in the past).

To protect myself, I shred my mail and am very careful with my private
info, and I check my credit reports. (I have to be especially careful
because I recently lost my wallet) By taking care with this info, I make
myself a less likely target, though you are quite correct that someone
could still get the info if they wanted.

The credit card companies (and the credit companies) don't want you to
know how easy it is: all it takes is your SSN and your mother's maiden
name. Reaylly: that is the credit card companies' answer to security in
the US. I don't know what they do in other countries.

Maybe a better solution is make SSN's public and force the credit
companies to use something better, but for now, I don't think that's going
to happen. The bottom line is that credit agencies are powerful and this
is how they work. It presents a risk to us and we all have to make a
choice about how careful we want to be. We don't want our credit unions to
make that choice for us.

	bjorn dittmer-roche
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

PS can anyone guess *my* mother's maiden name? I'll give you two tries.


[1] not that I feel sorry for the banks, who prefer the cost of occational
ID theft because they get the benefits of being able to send pre-approved
credit card offers to people. Not to mention online instant credit.....


On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, George Carless wrote:

> Just to add a contrary view - as a non-American, I'm a little bewildered
> by all of the fuss around SSNs.  I think it's a little bizarre that
> they're so widely used as a general means of identification when their
> original purpose was presumably limited to 'social security'.  But surely
> the cat is out of the bag?  SSNs seem to be so widely used, and already
> applied to so many areas, that worrying about things like the display of a
> few numbers on a web page would seem like a non-issue -- or rather a mere
> more obvious example of what is already a problem.
>
> Doesn't this come down to security through obscurity, insomuch as that we
> should not feel that because our SSN isn't on display that it's in any way
> secure from nefarious use?  I would imagine that anyone wanting to get a
> hold of someone's Social Security number could do so without too much
> difficulty, at any rate.  Of course, there's little sense in making it
> 'even easier'; but it might be pragmatic to worry more about *why* social
> security numbers are being captured/distributed/etc. at all in the first
> place..
>
> Cheers,
> --George
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