Isn't it kind of insane that a random entity can destroy your financial reputation with little more than a few bits of info about you? And without any notice before or after of it happening (you have to affirmatively ask about it to find out). It's so strange that you will get notified if you're rejected for credit due to your credit score, but not notified by the party who made the claim on which that decision was based?

In most cases, if there's a case of fraud, you file a counter, and (modulo various bureaucratic foulups), you're clear. The merchant almost always eats the cost, and that really should be changed, at least balanced with the financial institution.

The burden is more from the "death by a thousand cuts" variety of having to go through the re-assertion process again and again and again and .... I've been looking at attention and cognition mostly in the context of media, but the simple truth is that most of us are bombarded by all sorts of demands and claims, the dealing of with is an increasingly insurmountable burden.

I liken this to point-and-click computer interfaces. It's simple to graphically delete a few files or folders or message notifications. It's a slight chore when that rises to 20 or 30. At the level of a hundred or so items, most people would give up. With more powerful tools, it's possible to manage hundreds, thousands, even millions of items with dispatch. (Of course, that may increase the likelihood that you'll have to do so.)

Given the frequency of issues and the magnitude of them, presented through current financial and authentication mechanisms, even "easy" repudiation becomes untenable at scale.

When someone wants to confirm your identity, or otherwise interact with your 'financials', you get sent an email with a quickly expiring link that you click on to view a page where you enter the name of the org or person you /think/ is checking your data, and if it matches things work.

Beware Maginot defences.