Under current laws, exactly WHO is responsible for Internet identity theft?
Tags: Consumers, Credit Bureaus, Credit Card Companies, Internet Identity Theft, Poor Privacy, Privacy Laws, Punishments, Thieves
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March 31st, 2009 at 6:29 am
As always, the person committing the crime is responsible for the crime.
However, there has been major news reporting upon people or goverment agencies who failed to follow proper protocols which then made the stealing of identity data possible.
Ultimately, you need to help protect yourself against identity theft by being selective in who you give personal information to. You can’t just trust anyone who emails you “requiring” information because they may not be who they claim to be.
Checking your credit periodically, atleast yearly, can help to identify if someone has opened accounts or credit cards in your name. Then you can attempt to clean up the mess.
March 31st, 2009 at 10:45 am
i would say hackers those like b a s t a r d s they stole all my business funds
April 4th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Try the sites below. Hope this helps.
April 7th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
It is YOUR responsibility to ensure that you keep your papers, handbags, etc secure so that it doesn’t happen to you.
Should you be unfortunate enough to be a victim banks, etc will give you stolen monies back after you have filed a complaint to the police.
Again, it is you and only you who can prevent people from stealing off yourself, blaming credit card companies, the government, etc is simply a cop out and an excuse for your own laziness…
April 10th, 2009 at 3:35 am
the hackers and the scammers are responsible the the negative things on the internet (like identity theft, etc). They are the same type of people that scammed people through the mail prior to the internet.
it is sad that we as consumers have to be so vigilant and non-trusting of everything we see on the internet.
some people, i have read, actually blame the anti-virus companies (like norton, or mcafee) for the viruses, identity theft, scams etc….”stating that these companies initiated these things so that their profits would sky rocket”.
I do not believe that they are responsible…you will always find someone who can get around any system or find the weaknesses.
i hope this helps
good luck
April 11th, 2009 at 12:26 am
No one is responsible unless the theft was done by someone from a companies server or other supposed secure place.
You are responsible to ensure any other theft cannot occur..such as making sure a site you are giving personal info is secure..usually there is a little lock on the bottom of the screen..also you need to read there info to make sure they are using a secure server to obtain info.
Laws are in place..but finding people is difficult given the multitude of names and addresses they give.
Most id theft is used for illegal aliens who use it to obtain jobs.
April 12th, 2009 at 12:59 am
Perhaps I am misunderstanding your question.
The people who are responsible are the criminals.
Most of them are never caught.
A lot of law enforcement is somewhat ignorant about the nature of the crime, while some states are beginning to ***** down, because this is the fastest growing crime.
There are government agencies, like FTC FBI that go after these criminals, but this is not much help after you have been victimized. You need to use links from the web sites I cite below to get guidance on the kinds of things to do to lower the risk of this happening to you, then what you need to do if you suspect you have beome a victim.
If you are a victim, there is no one place to turn to, since the crooks could be
* getting a job using your social security number
* getting expensive medical care, charged to you, but the bill not go to you until they are out of the hospital
* draining all your bank accounts
* opening credit card accounts in your name, spending like crazy, disappearing, then you stuck with the bills
* using your home to get a second mortgage, then disappearking and the bank comes after you to make good on the loan
* getting pulled over by the police for speeding or other infractions, with driver’s license in your name, then when they fail to show up in court, a warrant is issued to have you arrested
I can cite many other examples … for each one of these types of incidents & each time it happens, there are a bunch of different places you have to deal with to clear your good name
That ought to be a separate Yahoo Answers question.
I have a lot of peace of mind with a “rider” on my property owner renter insurance … if this ever happens to me, my insurance company (Allstate) has a detective agency on retainer, to investigate, and try to straighten out, the mess that identity thieves can make to a person’s life.
Perhaps you are asking who is responsible to fight them.
In some states, no-one, because in many nations and many states of USA, there is no law against this, or there are laws, but there are so many exceptions as to make the laws tootless.
In general, in the USA, an infinite number of organizations may keep records on you, and have all kinds of errors there, and you know nothing about this until you cannot get a job, medical care, on an airplane, etc. because data about you is either very bad, or wrong, or has been stolen.
In most of the rest of the world, organizations are not allowed to have data on you, except with your permission, but if they get breached, with the data stolen on you, they are not required to tell you that this happened.
Here is a Chronology of Data Breaches
You’ll notice it is only in recent years they started recording this, and most of it supposedly is in USA, while any computer professional can tell you that breaches have been going on for decades, and are world wide. This is because a few years ago, California passed a law mandating notification of people placed at risk of identity theft due to theft or carelessness with records (such as putting people’s credit card info onto the Internet), and pretty soon after that, the general public became aware of the waterfall of disasters that had been going on for decades in secret.
Congress held hearings, asked representatives of the companies how many people were put at risk, and how come they only notified California residents. The answer was that the laws only required them to notify people in California. This led to Attorney Generals all over the USA wanting similar protection for their states, and now over 1/2 of the states in the USA have laws based on teh California one.
Here is a guide to what these laws are like in each state
Tou can subscribe to
this mailing list lets people know whenver there is another incident in the news, where people have been put at risk.
There’s not much discussion there, it is basically to help us stay informed about the nature of the waterfall of new risks.
There are links to past postings to the group, plus they host a data base like the crhonology above, except it is in the form that researchers can get at totals of the various combinations of types of incidents