Identity Theft: More Than the Criminals Are to Blame

Don't Blame All the Victims

As hard as it is to say, sometimes the victims need to take some responsibility when it comes to identity theft crimes. How many times have we seen identity theft victims who had known they should be shredding documents and safeguarding personal information, but had that "it will never happen to me" mentality?

As far as my sympathy goes, there's a big difference between a victim who took measures to safeguard themselves and a victim to had a "whatever will be will be" attitude. If more people took measures to prevent identity theft, there would definitely be fewer victims.

All In The Name of Greed

So far we've covered the fact that some victims may be partially to blame and that the criminals are definitely to blame, but there's another party to blame when it comes to identity theft, and that's the lenders and creditors themselves, not to mention the credit bureaus and information brokers.

See, if lenders would crack down on proof of identity and be willing to do more research before extending credit it would save thousands of people from falling victim to the crime. So why don't they do it? For the same reason the credit bureaus and information brokers don't change their ways - they are motivated by profit. So a few million people fall victim to the crime? So what? As long as their bottom line is fine they're happy.

Which brings me to the moral of the story - we need to push congress and the federal regulatory agencies to make changes to the privacy laws and the lending laws. The businesses obviously aren't going to do it on their own, regardless of what identity theft is doing to the masses.