Identity theft

[avevale_intelligencer]

Since I became a regular user of the internet, in order to do what I have done on it, I have supplied my name, address, telephone number, date of birth, card numbers and so on and so forth to approximately fifty squillion people, all of whom swore up and down they were never going to breathe a word of it to anyone else and all of whom could quite easily have been lying through their teeth. If I had not done this, I could not have done what I have done with the internet.

So, as far as I'm concerned, my identity is pretty much lost and gone forever anyway, and there is absolutely no point trying to scare me with stories about the evul commies.

So please, dear internet, lay the frod off. It's done already.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

This is true. Not only am I in the phone book, so anyone who knows my name and approximate place of abode can find my address and phone number, but for various reasons my address and phone number have appeared on Usenet (and hence on google groups). My date of birth has also appeared in several places. And given my address and name anyone can look up things like my DoB anyway from official sources. And other things banks treat as 'security' questions like my mother's maiden name. OK, my credit card details haven't, but as you say making any transaction with them could have had the details given or sold to anyone. So as far as LJ is concerned, I don't see that they can do any worse with my personal information.

On the other hand, I'm not going to make it easy for criminals by posting them on my LJ posts and profile, just as I don't leave my front door open when I go away for a week. If they want to defraud me they can at least do some work to find the information...

[jahura.livejournal.com]

Regardless of who owns them, according to the annoumcements the servers will stay based in San Francisco, which means that communications and privacy are still subject to state and FCC regulations. We actually have more to fear from our own banks than we do from the Russians.

And as an aside to part of keristor's comment, the mother's maiden name was a security measure that was meant to be "idiot proof" for the nuclear family generation that didn't yet have home computers and so banks would assign passwords to accounts that the customer would easily remember. You don't have to give them that, especially now with all the geneaology trackers out there. Any password will do, and if you so desire you can contact your bank/credit card company and change it at any time.