Identity Theft, Responsibility

Identity theft is a large and rapidly growing risk to individuals and to the larger economy. At present, there are widely divergent rules regarding the protection and reimbursement of victims. We have no idea of the accumulated losses suffered by citizens and companies over recent years. What we do know is that one major chink in whatever armor has been constructed to prevent identity theft is the loss through theft or negligence of vast quantities of personal data by government agencies and private companies we've entrusted to keep that data private. Most recently we learned the terminating employees of the census bureau routinely took their laptops containing personal census data with them after leaving their positions. In other instances vast amounts of data on computer tapes were lost, stolen or compromised.

In many instances if we're lucky enough to be notified by the organization who lost our information and they do not always decide to to that, we are given a written apology and perhaps reimbursement to check our credit report for a year. That's just not good enough.That missing personal information does not expire after a year.

What makes sense to me, and should have been obvious to others, is that any organization with whom we have entrusted personal information, were they to lose that data, should be totally responsible to make us whole again, forever, from any resulting identity theft. In addition they should be the ones responsible for correcting any resulting errors to our credit reports.

This straightforward approach will reassure the public and importantly force all such organizations to institute measures that will markedly reduce the frequency of such occurrences. The burden thus would be placed squarely upon those responsible.