Uncle Sam screws old ladies
I've been doing a lot of radio interviews lately and the most frequently mentioned topic is that of identity theft. Where does it come from? How do you counter it? I say the usual reasonable things like not giving out personal information online, etc. but it's got me thinking about other contributing factors and about the positioning of identity theft in the media; that's it's somehow our fault. It isn't though.
It's an urban myth that Identity Theft is caused by bad online behavior--it's no truer than that Aids is God's way of punishing bad lifestyle choices. A major source of identity theft is the government--blame them for all of these pitiful old people on television who have had their life savings ripped off by identity thieves.
Why the government you ask? Because they are putting pressure on companies to retain data, like phone records, financial information and email history. If service companies deleted data when the info was no longer immediately useful, than there'd be a lot less personal information on that laptop that that corporate putz is about to take home. Where it'll promptly be stolen.
Feds want companies to retain the information indefinitely just in case they want to snab it via subpoena (or perhaps without the paper these days). That desire is directly in conflict with the needs of consumers.
I wonder who will win?
Posted on March 01, 2007
