On 19 feb 2008, at 7:27, Paul Ferguson wrote:
According to the FTC, total consumer fraud losses totaled $1.2 billion, with the average monetary loss for an individual at $349.
Credit card fraud was the most common form of reported identity theft at 23 percent,
In many countries in Europe, people pay with debit cards that have a PIN number. You need to both copy the magnetic strip on the card and obtain the PIN to get at someone's money. And that's 1990s, if not 1980s, technology. The other issue is that banks and credit card companies don't have any interest in getting rid of fraud: as long as there is fraud, they can sell you the service of compensating you for that, which of course we all pay for through the credit card commissions on our purchases. And in many cases, the vendor ends up eating the loss rather than the bank, anyway. If you want stuff to work, you need to align the costs and benefits. See growth of the routing table: the community pays for the larger routers, the users of PI space get the benefits. BTW, about identity theft: if someone takes out a bank loan in my name, how is that my problem and not the bank's?