h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

First, you have to get the headline right. Nice, short, snappy and aimed at giving the reader the worst possible take on the subject in order to get them to read the article.

For example:
"One in four 'touched' by ID fraud "

Then the article leader (1st para) which shows that perhaps there has been a little tweaking of the story:

"Identity theft could lead to theft from your bank account
A quarter of UK adults have had their identity stolen or know someone who has fallen victim to ID fraud, a Which? magazine survey has suggested. "

Note the "or know someone who has" line. So not exactly 1 in 4 touched by it then in the sense the headline seems to convey? hmmm.

Then the completely daft bit to latch onto another current hotbed of discussion.

"The survey of 975 people found seven out of 10 favoured compulsory ID cards as a way to fight fraud."
So that's 975 out of a population of 59million. Hmm, how representative! And 7 out of ten of those think that the best way of combatting fraud is to bring in a new set of paperwork and computer systems that concentrates the information on your ID in one place.
Do they not know what fraud is?

all this from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4311693.stm

My wallet was stolen a few years back, and, a year after, somebody used my bankcard to buy a £2000 tv on credit. I only found out when I got letters about my new direct debit. The company concerned (Dixon's I think) didn't really seem to give a s**t. They apparently had the person(s) on film but didn't even bother to check it was me!

So now I've got a dodgy credit rating because of this. I phoned the police when it got stolen and therefore didn't get a crime reference number, so officially I didn't report the crime, and now I'm down as a defaulter. I don't think the big companies really care though, just factor it into the balance sheet as an expense and f**k the punters.

We don't need ID cards. If the tozzers at this shop had tried to debit £1 from the card they could have arrested the thieves on the spot.

PS any ideas how I could get this off my credit rating?

Mine was messed up by having lived in too much rented accomodation! (hate the fact I had to pay to find that out - given that the reason is not an explanation )

Only solved it when I got married. Suddenly having a spouse who had a mortgage did the trick. Cards aplenty!

Jules

So I should marry some solvent chick then? Sounds good to me...

Worked for me .... though I married a fella!

While people are so gullible it is hardly surprising that identity fraud is rife. Only to-day I had a phone call from some saying they were from some market research organisation and they would like to ask me some question. Not a chance matey - not to some anonymous voice on the end of a telephone line.

A few weeks ago I also had a phone call from someone claiming that they were phoning on behalf of the local Council and wanted to ask me some questions about my tenancy. The first question they asked was how long I had been a tenant - a question the council could have answered themselves in seconds. They never got any further.

In this day and age every household should have a shredder. It's as important as a cooker or a washing machine and a fraction of the price.

As for ID Cards, I agree, they will do absolutely nothing for fraud except that having all your personal information in place will just make the fraudsters job that much easier.

Donald

<>

Yes, that's true..

identity theft is a serious issue. more important than banking fraud, against which you as a consumer are usually indemnified, are things such as career theft.

this is where your identity is stolen by a third party in order to secure a job. this, apparantly, has reached plague proportions and can mightily screw you over and in a way that cannot be easily corrected.

you don't need to be a rocket scientist (perhaps literally) to work out that stealing a CV is a lot cheaper than paying your way through university and the benefits are self evident. additionally, laws to punish this are non existent or weak.

identity cards (or similar) should not be viewed as a problem worse than the problem they are trying to address. the potential problem exists with the element of compulsion that is often attached to the id card issue.

the whole issue of identity theft is likely to get a lot worse as the technological capacity to create and replicate documentation fraudulently becomes greater. whether id cards are an answer is another matter, but to downplay the scale of this problem is a tad naive.

having said that, daft articles like the one referenced in the header post don't help either.

They keep saying about how you should shred all important documents with such information on before you throw them away, I don't get this, why would anyone throw stuff away, I keep all my bank statements, bills, etc. I can't imagine not.

pedro7, do you realise that we have all now been 'touched' by identity theft through your telling us the story? Better up those figures Icky!

Strangely, I think one of the biggest contributors to the lack of destruction of sensitive documents is the move to central heating/gas heating/electric heating. Maybe only in my case, but I grew up in houses that had open fires, or solid fuel stoves. So anything you didn;t want, got thrown on the fire, a most effective way of destroying things.
Although quite what sensitive information my parents thought I'd put into my santa letters I am still unsure of.