Identity Theft 101

Whenever I hear an entertainer like Bill Maher or Michael Moore refer to Americans as "stupid", I feel the need to defend us. I mean… I like both of these entertainers, but the implication is that the rest of America is somehow dumber than them. Or at least the people who disagree with them are dumber than them.

I think that it's not a matter of intelligence, but a matter of choice. "I don't know what I don't know, and you are BY GOD not going to make me know it!" I think that, instead of stupidity, it is a dangerous combination of ignorance and arrogance. (And no… please do not fall into the trap of equating ignorance with stupidity. An ignorant person can be educated if they choose… a stupid person cannot.)

What has specifically brought this to mind for me is the number of people that I have seen using someone else's credit card. We are FREAKING OUT about identity theft. Almost every bank and insurance company now has an "identity protection" arm, and there are also several private companies that do nothing BUT identity protection.

At the same time, we piss and moan if a clerk asks to see our ID for a credit card, or refuses to let us use someone else's card. By the way… if a clerk refuses to let you use daddy's credit card, don't get pissed at them, it's not the store policy. IT IS FEDERAL LAW. It is a federal CRIME to present someone else's card… it's called fraud, because you are presenting yourself as that person when you're not. And then, if you sign their name to the credit slip, you're also guilty of forgery.

And then let's not forget speed pass and speed pay and swipe machines and all of the other things that we insist on for "convenience" that make credit card fraud amazingly easy.

So, we insist that we have all of these "conveniences". Then we lose our card. We don't notice right away. Someone charges a couple hundred dollars worth of crap on it using speed pay, we see the charges, realize that our card is gone. Do we accept this as the price of the conveniences that we insist on? No. We demand that the credit card company or the bank eat the loss. They then turn around and report it to their insurance company and get reimbursed. And then we bitch about how much insurance costs…

So here are my ideas to resolve this…

1) We go back to the old days of credit card presentation. If you present your card… no matter how small the purchase is… we are required to show a photo ID and sign a slip of paper. PERIOD.

2) For online purchases, a pin or password is required for all credit card transactions. You establish the pin with your bank or credit card company, and then that would be used in place of the utterly useless "card security code", which is, insanely, printed on the card.

3) A tip for your own cards. The only time that I have ever lost a credit or debit card was when I lost my entire wallet. A girlfriend of mine would constantly "lose" (read as: forget) her credit and debit cards places. The solution? When you take out your credit or debit card, keep your wallet in your hand until it's returned.

4) Make the merchants responsible for DOUBLE any illegal credit card transactions. They would have to eat the cost of the transaction, and then pay a fine equal to the amount.

If we enacted these things, identity theft would almost become a thing of the past.

But we won't.

Is it because we're stupid? I think not. Lazy, maybe…

Peace.

Rev. Randal