Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> identity theft [...] just doesn’t exist in Italy

Big lol. The country used to be famous for frauds and scams! Of course identity fraud exists, but precisely because everyone expects it, the majority of systems errs on the side of caution and requires validation from multiple sources. The result is that fraud processes become so much harder to pull off that fewer and fewer bad guys attempt it, but on the other hand every validation step becomes a bureaucratic nightmare (“did you include certificate X from office A, Y from office B, and Z from office C, as well as your ID card, health card, tax card, and recent pictures? No? Sorry, no cookie for you.”)

This is also why the country has a pretty secure and advanced way to carry out official acts electronically (PEC) - because otherwise fraud would be even more rampant.

I do agree that the “anglo” hate for ID documents (“such Napoleonic constructs, so barbaric!”) leaves the door open to scammers, but it’s not like they don’t exist in Italy too.

I see, the good old racist card. But no, you're wrong. I have opened bank accounts in three EU countries and the procedure was the same everywhere. No ID, no bank account.

I still have to see a headline like "identity theft ruined my life" in any other language than English. Every single time "furto di identità" makes the news in Italy, it's just about someone impersonating a famous person on social media to scam the followers, which is a completely different thing than in the US.

So yeah of course scams and credit card skimmers exist in Italy (though the US's disdain for chip and PIN would be another interesting topic). Dishonest telemarketers convince gullible people to switch into more expensive utilities contracts. But identity theft in the US is not in any way comparable to "scamming".

And yeah, PEC ("registered email") is pretty cool. :)

I don't speak Italian so I can't really say anything about that, but searching "identity fraud" in Dutch turns up plenty of results: https://www.google.nl/search?q=identiteitsfraude&hl=nl

Here's a "identity theft ruined my life" story: https://www.ad.nl/tech/hanna-krijgt-door-identiteitsfraude-i...

The problem might be worse in the US and UK, but it's not like it doesn't exist at all in the EU.

I have to wonder if part of the difference is down to how we deal with creditors in the US and the financial welfare of the population. We have a huge population living paycheck to paycheck with almost no cushion for crisis and we have a system where creditors can take the money from your bank account or directly from you wages.

If the money acquired by a creditor was what was needed to pay your rent you could be looking at eviction in short order. The law in my state until 2020 required only a 3 day delay to begin eviction for non payment. It used to be possible to be due on May 1st. Receive an eviction notice on May 4th and be homeless by mid month. I think it now takes a whole month for your life to disintegrate.

Being homeless doesn't bode extremely well for you continued employment as a handful of missed days can terminate your employment.

Being jobless doesn't bode well for your health insurance which there is no way you can afford to maintain past employment.

Being without insurance, job, money doesn't bode well for being able to afford medical care hopefully you aren't receiving continuing care for a major medical situation because you might be dead.

I have to hope western Europe isn't remotely like that.

Identity theft if very common in Italy for pension fraud, people don’t report deaths of their elderly parents and assume their identities to cash in pensions.

It's not really the same—a caregiver keeping on doing bureaucracy tasks after a person's death, vs. an unknown person using a living person's identity to get loans or credit cards.

It’s not just direct carers and it’s still an identity theft, what identity theft can be used for ranges between different countries based on financial incentives in some countries getting a loan or credit is far more easier than others in others state pensions and benefits are higher.

In the US stealing the identity of a 30 year old with decent credit can allow you to rack up a decent bill in their name. In Italy the state pension is universal and is about €14,000 a year and whilst in the US technically you can get far more in social security payments the people who are susceptible to identity theft in that group tend to not be the ones who maxed out their contributions over the past 30-40 years.

No, it's identity fraud which is a superset of identity theft.

All identity theft is fraud... you are grasping at straws here.

Right, all identity theft is fraud, but not all identity fraud is theft.

I can't answer below, so I will leave this here: https://web.archive.org/web/20090627220408/http://www.busine...

If a person dies the identity arguably belongs to their estate, if they don't declare death and use it to make money illegally it's not stolen.

You assume someone’s identity that’s identity theft...

> the good old racist card

Mate, I’m Italian ;) I might be self-hating at best.

When I visit Italy I’m often impressed by the physical lock & key systems in use even in pretty humble domiciles. Those keys look incredibly complex compared to anything I normally see in the US short of, say, a Mult-T-Lock.

It’s necessary. I grew up on the outskirts of a pretty wealthy, pretty law-abiding Italian city, and still: the flats on the first floor were burgled twice in a few years, my family’s own flat was squatted before it was even finished, and bikes or motorbikes were routinely stolen. My dad just told me this week that the closet where his amateur football club keeps training material was burgled: the idiots literally cut through the wall to remove the hardened door, just to get to a few footballs and plastic cones. This was the fifth attempt in two years, and they finally succeeded - thanks to the lockdown there was nobody around, my dad found out just because they littered some of the training bags nearby. Security remains a big problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com