People use "theft" because it's the terminology the companies responsible for the failure insist on using. The word makes it sound like the person failed to pro

People use "theft" because it's the terminology the companies responsible for the failure insist on using. The word makes it sound like the person failed to protect their identity, and hides that it was the company which failed to validate the identity. This should be called "identity validation failure". When scammers impersonate a company to steal your money it's no longer called identity theft.