In that case I am not a victim of the fraudster, I am a victim of the bank.
The banks do not have sufficient incentive to improve their identification methods, so long as we tolerate the concept that we bear any responsibility for a transaction that involves only themselves and a fraudster who knows the answers to a few trivia questions about me.
You’re not the victim of people who merely believe the lies and start to avoid you.
To me that was akin to being ostracized because your reputation was ruined by an impersonation.
On the contrary, they stand to risk 100% of the loaned money. What more could be at risk. Also the fair credit reporting act has pretty strict requirements for what a bank or credit agency should do when you’ve told them the debt is fraudulent, returning you to whole eventual.
What would be required to fix false identity frauds? Is that more or less tolerable for society than X% of people dealing with a stolen identity. What about people who have some problematic history (ran away from home, prior homeless, etc)? How would strict requirements impact them?
Really I guess my question. Oxygen_crisis, why do you believe identity theft is actually a problem that needs solving?
I think the argument is that the hurt is generated by the bank. Why isn't it the bank's responsibility to have their shit together and not do that?
Two big problems are:
1. If you happen to be one of the victims of the fraud, it hurts! Sometimes a lot! A lot more than it hurts the bank.
2. If you don't like the level of (in)security that the banks have chosen, what other options do you have? Right now I don't know, I think maybe Bitcoin is your best bet?
Because nobody can take out a fraudulent loan in bitcoin? Well.. that’s problem accurate.
I’m just not sure how is bitcoin even the tiniest bit relevant in this case?
It is bank fraud and imitation with the intent to abuse the reputation of the person imitated. It should be illegal to imitate you when it negatively hurts you. It’s illegal to imitate police and doctors etc because it uses their reputations for fraudulent means. This is the same thing.
Banks are the financially defrauded victims in this situation, but the victims are also individuals because banks passed the reputational risk of fraud to the customers. If your credit score is hurt and you need to hire lawyers to fix it or you get denied for a mortgage (or just a good rate), you’ve experienced tangible harm.
Banks know they experience harm here. They plan for it. It’s baked into the prices and financial statements. Read the essays by Patrick McKenzie, he’ll argue that fraud is intentionally tolerated. They know that the consumer won’t be expected pay once the fraud is discovered. That’s not their goal, and they’re not being deceitful here.
You can argue if this system is overall good or bad, but it almost certainly has led to cheaper credit for everyone. Outsourcing credit worthiness to a magic national number (or 3) is cheaper than every credit union assessing risk themselves, with less knowledge.