I invented something.

Is "identity theft" a bogus crime, politically invented to shift blame for something that should not be an individual's responsibility?

• Before you answer, take a look at the following sketch: The argument here seems to be very strong - that "identity theft" was invented to shift the responsibility for security of internet systems from the provider to the customer. If banks and other sites were held responsible for identity theft, then maybe we would not have online banking or so many online services now.. but at the same time, if the organizations involved thought having online services would be valuable, they would be funding teams of researchers beavering away at finding an unbreakable method of authentication - and who knows what they might have discovered? Identity theft appears to be one of the most egregious examples of services getting away with horrible flaws because "no solution has been invented yet", forgetting that inventing things takes work and money ideally committed by the people who need the invention. If you take that need away then of course no solution will ever be invented.

• Answer:

  Let's say that we're not talking about money, we're talking about e-mails instead. Let's say that you tell someone your password for your account and that someone logs in and erases all your mails. Is the hosting service to blame? Identity theft is usually a combination of the faults of the user and the service - the first for letting his credentials transpire and the service for being too lax in their authentication methodology. So no, it's not the banks fault completely, it can also be the user's fault. This is why some form of insurance is welcome.