How Europe Prevents Identity Theft……….We Should Pay Attention!
It costs us millions every year. Can you afford it?
Data security experts in Europe don’t collect statistics on identity theft because it’s not seen as enough of a problem. Conversely, the Federal Trade Commission reports that over 10 million Americans are victims of identity theft each year.
Europeans, as a rule, have national identity cards and European credit bureaus tend to have unique identifying numbers for the consumers in their databases. We have a social security number which is suppose to be used for social security retirement benefits, not as an all-purpose identifier.
“It’s much more difficult to steal your identity” in Europe, said fraud expert Jim Vaules, a vice president of LexisNexis a US database company. The key piece of information an identity thief needs is a person’s national ID number, and that appears in a lot few places [in Europe] than Social Security numbers do in the US.
“A lot less of their data is floating around, ” said Bob Sullivan, an MSNBC technology reporter. “They are far more strict about data sharing than we are in the US.”
Since credit bureaus are contained, ususally managed by banks, and don’t allow unlimited access to their data bases in Europe, lenders use other means in evaluating credit risk. Not so here, where any business can subscribe to a credit bureau and use that information to make decisions about an individual’s transaction with them.
The most important thing European countries have done to protect their citizens from identity theft—they have strict laws which control and penalize businesses from selling and/or sharing personal data.
While credit processes in Europe may take a little longer, Europeans are far better off when it comes to the risk of exposure. Americans should be more concerned about their exposure to identity theft than in obtaining credit quickly. The penalties to businesses and credit bureaus that compromise personal data should be stiff enough to ensure that data is protected from access.
Bottom line, America, we need to take a page from the European’s book and start being a lot more stringent about protecting our data. If not, those FTC statistics are just going to get worse. Right now, identity theft is costing you $5 billion a year in out-of-pockets expenses. I can’t afford it, can you?