Personal Budget Training: Measuring Identity Theft at Top Banks

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Measuring Identity Theft at Top Banks

Is your bank a top target?

This article appeared in PC Magazine about identity theft attempts at banks.

Chris Hoofnagle, a researcher at the University of California's Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, believes that banks owe it to consumers to be up-front. The banks should report basic statistics, he says: the number of attempts at identity theft, the number of successful attempts, the form of theft attempted (such as the typical phishing e-mail), and the products compromised, say, checking accounts and credit cards. This basic data would let consumers weigh identity theft metrics when shopping for a service.

I think the graph is a little misleading. It seems that the data should be reported as theft attempt per customer or something similar to even the playing field. Based on this graph, I would not go near BOA and stick with USAA.

Labels: identity theft