[g051051]

> They have successfully convinced the public that identity theft is a separate and distinct crime done exclusively by one person to another rather than simply fraud that they are aiding and abetting.

This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how credit reporting works.

When "identity theft" occurs, it's important to realize that the credit reporting firms are not involved. That is solely due to failures, at the institutions that actually grant credit, to verify the identity of the person they are interacting with.

The flow goes: a fraudster uses harvested data to impersonate someone to a credit grantor, such as a credit card company. The credit grantor, accepting this identity at face value, asks the credit reporting agency (CRA) about the credit rating of the impersonated entity. The CRA says "Joe Victim has a relatively low risk of fraud". So the identity theft has already occurred before the CRA is even consulted.

Later on, when the fraudster fails to pay as agreed, the credit grantor incorrectly reports to the CRA that the fraud was caused by Joe Victim. Again, the CRA is just relying on the data provided to them by their clients.

[sidewndr46]

You might want to rethink that. Credit reporting firms actively aid identity fraudsters because it is profitable

https://privacyrights.org/data-breaches/court-ventures

[lolinder]

I understood the comment about aiding and abetting to be a reference to the fact that Equifax leaked about half of all Social Security Numbers back in 2017. For 145 million Americans the "harvested data" you refer to was data that the credit bureaus hoovered up and then failed to protect.

[g051051]

> Equifax leaked about half of all Social Security Numbers back in 2017.

They weren't leaked, they were stolen. Does a bank "leak money" when it's robbed?