CSO

Personal information? Wazzat?

Seriously, what is needed is really reform on the credit bureau end. If a credit bureau says that I have taken out a credit card for $20k and charged it up, but I haven't, is that not libel? The real problem here is that we have this identity based finance scheme, plus somehow knowing a name, social security number, etc, is enough to verify an identity? These things are not secret and were never meant to be! This is ridiculous! If somebody is able to convince a credit card company or mortgage broker to issue them credit by providing my name, my social security number, and a few other publicly available bits of info, I really don't care. It should be the credit issuer's loss, and not mine. The real reform is needed needed for afterwards when I go to apply for credit and a credit bureau spreads false statements about me (by attributing the fraudulent transaction to me). Fix this, and the rest will snap in line, real quick.

The same goes for the idea that a credit card number is secret. It is not; it's printed on the card. Every merchant gets their paws on it, which is exactly the problem. Public key crypto has been around for what, 30 years? It's sheer laziness on the credit card companies that they haven't switched over to a decently secure system. But somehow, as it stands right now, people worry about getting their credit card numbers 'stolen'. Once again, until the burden of liability is shifted to those who are truly negligent, nothing will change.