Posted 3:31 PM

A swing at Gates :)

Sun's Sara Gates recently posted about a conversation we had last week concerning a Harris poll (conducted at Sun's behest) concerning identity theft. Sara's recent post talks about data breaches and identity theft, where she concludes that the theft occurs at the breach, whether or not the identity data is used fraudulently - or is even the target of the breach!

But the poll we were talking about specifically defined identity theft as: "...someone using your personal information without your permission to commit fraud or other crimes, regardless of whether they obtained your information online, by telephone, in the mail or by any other means."

This, once again, points up the fact that idenity theft is self-defined by the victim, as I pointed out (What is Identity Theft?) during the flap about the FTC survey on this subject a couple of years ago.

What I said then is simply reinforced by the Sun-Harris poll - not identity theft, but media chicken-luddle-ism about it will drive consumers from using the internet for commerce.