``Four in five parents who failed to apply internet controls''

Failed to? Or just didn't? Or actively chose not to?

I'm not absolutely sure this falls under Ofcom's jurisdiction. Okay, sure, educate people about phishing, being careful, and on how to properly shred and dispose of the more sensitive documents they receive, all well and good. But the crux of the problem by far revolves around the lackadaisical attitude of many companies - I'd much rather see a group of people such as the BERR or OFT run around slapping businesses; seems like it'd help cut the number of incidents down far better by starting at the source.

Probably the OFT more, thinking about it. I'm pretty sure kicking companies into not leaving insecure personal details in pubs falls under 'consumer protection enforcement', right?

ID theft, or fraud to those who speak English, does seem to be a bit hyped in the UK.

Where I live now I'm legally obliged to put my address and bank account details on every invoice I issue and on my web site. Yet, strangely, we seem to have a lower rate of fraud.

So, is it that:

a. British banks are lazy and insecure.

b. People outside of Britain are more honest.

c. It's a load of hype.

Shouldn't that read "businesses and government agencies"?

It's not I.D fraud per-se that people are fearful of, it's all the unknown elements around it: will I lose money? will I be help accountable? will it be a lot of hassle to set things right? will it affect my credit rating?

Once ID fraud becomes mainstream, people will approach it with the same nonchalance as a parking ticket - remember when you got your first?

The key thing it that unless you're so stupid that to allow you to *have* money is in itself negligent, people simply don't bear the cost, even in the small number of cases where the money isn't recovered. The ones who should be fearful are the banks[1] - it's their lax security that allows this to happen in the first place (idea: how about texting the card-holder each time a "card not present" transaction takes place? They do this in some places.) Hopefullly if the losses get high enough, the banks will actually get up and take some effective measures to prevent it.

[1] yes, yes, I know: we all pay for it eventually - increased charges - yadda yadda.

Er...

No it isn't.

Perhaps they meant uploading.

"Shouldn't that read "businesses and government agencies"?"

What's the difference?

I also call shenanigans on this "only 23% realised that they were downloading illegaly". Presumably, the other 77% didn't know what a "file-sharing" service was or were just lying.

Personally, the only ID fraud that concerns me is the one where the government creates a ludicrously expensive citizen tracking database while fraudulently claiming that it will be really cheap and help save from the terrorist hordes.