There is a big difference between Credit Card fraud and Identity theft.
By law, all credit card companies must clear fraudulent charges from your account, and most charges a very obcious...So obvious that some credit card companies will call to verify the charges (I had AmEx) do that) and they will take the charges off your bill.
Identity theft is different in as much as they steal your identity, and get new credit cards or open other credit accounts in your name. These can usually be shown to be obvious cases of ID theft.
Sometimes the thief can even get new ID, drivers licenses, and your birth certificate, etc. Those incidents are much more rarere and harder to prove that it was not you. To steal someone's Identity requires a great deal of knowledge and information about someone, so these types of thefts are typically "Inside jobs" and the information was obtained from someone who works at an office where they keep that kind of information, or someon hacked into their system. This would be like the credit card company, Mortgage company, banks, or even government agencies.
I always give different answers to some of the security questions asked by some banks, etc. Like pets names. i usually give a name that starts with the same leter at the business that I am doing business with. It may not prove anything, but it does show me the source of the information leak. I do the same think when they ask for my mother's maiden name, and that also makes it harder for a hacker to find out where you were born and get a birth certificate when he doe not know your mother's maiden name.
I tyhink it would be good if the US would require PIN numbers for Social Security numbers. You do not give your PIN number to anyone but anyone needing to know your SSN can have it but it require you to enter your PIN on a special key pad similar to a PIN number on a credit/debit card. The keypads would be controlled only by the Social Security Administration and would would be encrypted duriing transmission and the key code changed randomly like satellite tranmissions are changed every 90 seconds or so.
That may sound like overkill, but if you consideer that you do not need to give your SSAN very often, and even if there is a slight delay, it's not a big issue. It ould only be a big issue for the crooks who don't want to hang around becausee the police may have been called???
Yes there will be some idiots who forget their PIN and there would have to be a much more eleaborate way to give them their PIN, or assing them a temporary new one...But even then, most crooks are not going to want to hang around or waiting to get caught.
It might even be possible to have a secondary PIN that could be used once you were photographed and fingerprinted, etc. Perhaps you fingerprint could be digitized and serve as a secondary PIN ??
...Rich
