If an Identity Falls in the Forest No One Reads the Notification Letter, Does It Make a Sound?
Identity theft is a hot topic for those pushing monitoring services but it looks like just about no one else cares. I occasionally get comments in this blog promoting identity theft monitoring services and I have to give credit to the creative types behind the the freecreditreport.com commercials which are funny in spite of the fear mongering. A recent study measures the impact of breach notification laws and finds they're not all that useful.
In Do Data Breach Disclosure Laws Reduce Identity Theft? (pdf) (via SearchSecurity) the authors point out that only 2%-4% of identity theft cases originate from "Computer/Phishing/Internet" sources. One of the authors told SearchSecurity:
"All the laws do is inform consumers, and then they need to take action," Romanosky said. "If they don't do anything about it, what chance does the law have of succeeding? The onus is on the consumer to take action. It's hard for people to understand the consequences of their own inaction. They feel overconfident that it won't happen to them, and the odds are that they're right. There's inertia, a lack of consequences and a lack of understanding to properly perceive what the consequences might be."
This problem is similar to the one discussed in yesterday's post and some earlier posts on data loss prevention.
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