4 ms·

It's not victim blaming. They (the creditors) are the victims and they expect you to make them whole.

• shadowgovt 4y ago
  They expect strangers unrelated to the actual fraudulent transaction to make them whole.
  • boole1854 4y ago
    To be fair, from the creditor's perspective it is often unclear whether the transaction was really illegitimate. Fraud in which the consumer falsely claims they were the victim of identity theft is a real phenomenon, in the same way that there is real insurance fraud where consumers falsely claim to be victims of physical theft.
    • sidewndr46 4y ago
      That is because creditor's have every incentive to make sure they only barely perform identity verification. It's not at all uncommon to find out about people who discover someone else took out a loan in their name, but is actually making payments on it. It happens when someone is wanted for criminal investigations, an illegal immigrant, or just has crap credit. Crappy identity verification basically widens their customer base.
      • boole1854 4y ago
        As someone who works in a consumer loan-related field, I know from experience that this is not correct. With very few exceptions, creditors do not have incentives to barely perform identity verification. Even if 90% of identity thieves paid back their loans, the losses on the remaining 10% would swamp any profits -- and of course far fewer than 90% of identity thieves pay back their loans. Industry losses due to incorrect identity verification are in the tens of billions annually. There are many vendors that financial institutions pay big bucks to in order to improve their ability to correctly perform identity verification. However, like everything else, there are tradeoffs involved, and it is rarely if ever optimal to try to push identity fraud to nil.
        • sidewndr46 4y ago
          I guess I should have specified "loan originators". You're right, creditors don't have any incentive to do this. But that salesman at the used car dealership doesn't really have anything to lose.
          • boole1854 4y ago
            Fair enough. I agree about that.