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Comment by ako | Hacker News Reader

Identity theft framing helps customers understand they have a responsibility in using these systems in a secure way. If you call it bank fraud, customers don’t see their part in the responsibility, and become careless, increasing the chance of bank fraud,

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As a responsible consumer, how do I prevent Equifax and AT&T from distributing my information?

Actually, when someone signed up for a Bank of America checking account with my AT&T information, I notified AT&T once I was done with BofA... And AT&T ignored it, until 2 years later.

Whatever BS shreading and information hygeine I do amounts to nothing when a big company lets stuff out. Or when my employer's HR person keeps unencrypted payroll files on a USB drive in their car in SF.

That's an especially hard pickle to be in when your bank sells transaction information to Equifax and won't let you opt out.

And by calling it identity theft instead of bank fraud, the reverse effect is had on the common perception of who has responsibility when dealing with an incident. You can have your “””identity stolen””” at a bank without an ounce of carelessness on your end.

That doesn’t scan for me. We call it car theft and thousands of cars are stolen every day that are properly locked and parked, even in the owners driveway.

Banks are notorious for adopting new technology at a glacial pace, often only when forced to do so.

Witness the adoption of chip and pin in the U.S. oh wait, we still haven’t properly adopted it and a stolen card can just be tapped on the terminal of most retailers in 2024 with no additional authentication.

This is the real problem though. It's literally the money form of "password on paper" if you have such a card. Not that I have experience, but I'd assume the largest part of scams comes down to this, easily stolen and used credit card info. Like it's still 2014.

Many more would be stolen if customers wouldn’t lock their cars. Customer awareness doesn’t prevent it, but it does reduce it.

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