Researchers say notification laws not lowering ID theft By Robert McMillanOver the past five years, 43 U.S. states have adopted data breach notification laws, but has all of this legislation actually cut down on identity theft? Not according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University who have published a state-by-state analysis of data supplied by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
"There doesn't seem to be any evidence that the laws actually reduce identity theft," said Sasha Romanosky, a Ph.D student at Carnegie Mellon who is one of the paper's authors
Romanosky's team took a state-by-state look at FTC identity theft complaints filed between 2002 and 2006 to see whether there was a noticeable impact on complaints in states that had adopted data breach notification laws such as California's SB 1386, which compels companies and institutions to notify state residents when their personal information has been lost or stolen.
...However, they found that other factors, such as the state's population, gross domestic product and fraud rate did have a significant effect on identity theft rates....
..In fact, there may be good reasons that explain why breach laws have not cut down on identity theft. Many consumers simply ignore breach notification letters. (emphasis added) And Romanosky believes that security firms are still not doing enough to protect data themselves. "In so many of these cases, the breaches occur because of ridiculous security practices," he said..(Full text at www.networkworld.com)
The reason many consumers ignore breach letters is called "blissful ignorance", a term coined by a Doctor at the University of Iowa. The less people know or understand about a problem, the less they fear it..
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