data theft: how to fix the mess - new york times

data theft: how to fix the mess - new york times more articles in business > skip to article nytimes.com news business education health international national new york/region nyt front page obituaries science sports technology washington weather features arts books cartoons crossword/games dining & wine fashion & style home & garden learning network magazine movies multimedia/photos nyc guide theater travel week in review opinion editorials/op-ed readers' opinions the public editor classifieds autos job market real estate all classifieds go to a section log in - register now nyt since 1981 nyt 1851-1980 google/web multimedia nyc guide business home media & advertising world business your money markets company research mutual funds stock portfolio columns joseph nocera data theft: how to fix the mess sign in to e-mail this printer-friendly single-page reprints save article published: july 9, 2005 in the early 1970's, senator william proxmire, the wisconsin democrat who was the scourge of the banking industry, decided something needed to be done about the chaotic state of the credit card business. credit cards were still relatively new, and all over the country, banks were peppering americans with unsolicited cards - sending them not only to the heads of households, but to their children, their dogs and their dead grandmothers. thieves would follow the postman doing his rounds, steal cards out of mailboxes and use them. people were being billed for things they'd never bought with cards they'd never asked for - and the banks were demanding payment. even though the banking industry insisted that only a small minority of transactions were fraudulent, the public outcry was enormous. here's what mr. proxmire did. first, in 1970, he drafted a bill that banned the practice of "dropping" credit cards on people without their consent. four years later, he pushed through a bill that limited consumer liability to $50 if a credit card was used fraudulently. the banking industry was apoplectic as these bills became the law of the land, especially the $50 limit. why, bank lobbyists complained, should the institutions have to take the hit if a customer was so careless as to have his wallet stolen or credit card snitched? shouldn't people be responsible for their own actions? but in time, the banks came to see that it owed senator proxmire a debt of gratitude. he hadn't hurt the credit card industry. he had saved it. by forcing the industry to solicit customers, instead of simply dropping cards on them, he gave americans the feeling that the decision to have a credit card was theirs, not some bank's. and with the $50 liability limit, people no longer had to fear the dire consequences of having their card stolen. they could embrace credit cards instead of fearing them, which for better or worse they've been doing ever since; there are today over a billion credit cards just in the united states. over the years, banks and consumers learned to deal with credit card fraud, so that it has become little more than an irritant. banks don't even demand the $50; they cover the entire loss themselves.the current "identity theft" crisis, in which we're learning, daily it seems, that institutions like bank of america, choicepoint, citigroup and many others have allowed our personal financial data to be lost or stolen, is fundamentally an outgrowth of our dependence on credit. credit cards are the primary means of buying things on the internet. credit card information is what is most often stolen in a data breach case, like the recent cardsystems solutions fiasco, in which as many as 40 million credit cards may have been compromised. even in the worst case, when data thieves get enough personal information to impersonate someone electronically, the bad guys usually wind up using that information to establish credit in order to buy things in that person's name. so when i read the stories about data theft, i can't help thinking back on that credit card crisis of the 1970's. now, as then, the chances of facing that worst outcome are pretty rare. the vast majority of modern cases classified as identity theft are really just old-fashioned credit card fraud, easily dealt with. (in fact, most of the time, the fraud is committed the old-fashioned way: through the lifting of a wallet.) according to towergroup, a financial services consulting firm, only about 160,000 people last year had their financial identities - as opposed to their credit card information, which numbers in the millions - stolen by fraudsters. many of the data losses are just that: lost data, not stolen data. the problem isn't even that new; the main reason we are learning about all these cases is a 2003 california law that required, for the first time, that consumers be informed when their personal information was compromised. before 2003, there were plenty of examples of hacked data. but we didn't hear about those, so we weren't as worried about it.but so what? in the end, it doesn't matter if the problem isn't new or the risk of being hurt by a data theft is small: the fear is palpable. "in the choicepoint case," said robert richardson, the editorial director of the computer security institute, "people weren't just uncomfortable that their data was stolen." "they were also upset to discover that this company that had insufficiently protected their data even had their data." 12next page > more articles in business > related articles black market in credit cards thrives on web (june 21, 2005) social security: migrants offer numbers for fee (june 7, 2005)company news; theft yields 1.4 million credit card numbers (april 19, 2005)national briefing | washington: consumer fraud rose in '04 (february 2, 2005) inside nytimes.com charles taylor'srise and fall the ghost in thebaghdad museum making of a toddler supergroup digitalcomposer a benefit for insurers advertisement past 24 hours |past 7 days bad behavior does not doom pupils, studies say a lineman in my bed: notes on teeth grinding from ants to people, an instinct to swarm david brooks: the character factor connections: absinthe returns in a glass half full of mystique and misery go to complete list op-ed contributor: exercise on the brain basics: don’t throw out your broken ipod; fix it via the web bad behavior does not doom pupils, studies say humdinger of a project: tracing slang to ireland frank rich: the coup at home go to complete list planet earth - watch tonight 8 pm e/p on the discovery channel advertisements new york to la with time left in your day. gulfstream.com/g150 find low fares on aa.com. earn miles today. book now. help us boot up the world. give one. get one. travel to paradise on celebritys caribbean cruises. from $349. copyright 2005 the new york times company home privacy policy search corrections xml help contact us work for us site map back to top

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