The Reality of Identity Fraud
For the better part of the last 6 months I have been traveling around and talking about our project, Decentralized ID, with pretty much anyone who will listen. I have found that most people don’t truly realise the repercussions of identity theft. Even myself, I had to interview a few people and do quite a bit of research to truly comprehend how frustrating and time consuming it can be. And this despite the PC World report from 2015 which stated that one in every 14 Americans has been the victim of identity fraud.
According to the Guardian newspaper in an article written August of 2017, levels of identity fraud have reached new highs, with nearly 500 occurring every day!*
This is down to a couple factors; one being that nearly all of these thefts occurred online, where we now store so many personal details and the other reason being data breaches of larger companies. We trust these companies with extremely sensitive information, reassured of the utmost security in their capable hands — and yet, these breaches are also increasing.
What I learned from my interviews and research is that many times, people don’t even realise they have been victimised until they are rejected for a loan due to poor credit, or they receive an invoice for an item or service they did not buy. In some cases, there are protocols in place to minimise the damage, but often these alerts, due to “unusual activity” in a bank account for example, come too late. Once you’ve figured out that your identity has been compromised, then comes the long, arduous task of setting everything right. You may lose money that you can never recoup and even if your bank agrees to cover the erroneous charges, there is an awful lot of paperwork and phone calls involved. Many of which require you to divulge the sensitive information which was stolen in the first place! In an article written by Kim Z Dale on the Chicago Now website, she details how despite her stolen social security number being the root of the fraud, she had to then turn around and give her social security number to multiple people attempting to recover her accounts. Finally, these phone calls and recovery processes take TIME, something which, unlike money, cannot ever be returned.
Now, what if there was a way to avoid this? Not just on a personal level, but on a larger, global scale? A system that protected your online identity, as well as safeguarded any companies handling sensitive information?
This is where Decentralized ID comes in… and I will be going into detail about this in the next post. Watch this space…!
References:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/aug/23/identity-fraud-figures-cifas-theft
