[LINK] Apple's Cloud

[Adam Todd]

At 18:58 18/07/2008, Rick Welykochy wrote:

>Addressing your use of the word, sure the concept of privacy has
>changed over 100 years. It is has to. There was no such thing as
>identity theft 100 years ago. No phishing scams, online banking ,etc.
>etc.

It's not really identify theft, it's fraud.

If people did face to face transaction and there was consistency in 
employment - then you couldn't have identify theft' because the 
Russian Bearded Bloke just doesn't look like my wife!  (or me for that matter!)

With more and more people allowing online registrations, and the 
reality that most places use a DATE OF BIRTH as a security ID, 
Identification is doomed to fail.

I even FAILED on Identifying as myself the other day when a BANK 
called me to discuss an account matter.  Well obviously the account 
matter isn't too serious.

But then it kinda occurred to me that - how do I know it was really 
the bank calling me?  They wanted ME to ID to them - yet THEY called me!!

I know it was the bank because we have an annotation on the account 
they are required to use BEFORE we'll even start to hold a 
conversation.  Sometimes it takes a bit of arguing to get them to 
read the annotation for my benefit.

But really, it's so easy to ring someone and ask them to CONFIRM 
their ID because you are from some Organisation.

I had a suspicious call a few months ago "Hi I'm from the bank and we 
need to fix your Internet Password, can we just quickly ID you so we 
can discuss your account"

I asked which Bank  and got the reply "Well that is part of the ID 
process.  If I told you which bank I was from then you might be able 
to defraud your identity to me if you were an ex partner or someone else."

I nearly bought it!

Be afraid - be VERY AFRAID!