A lot of people complain that the government isn’t doing enough to prevent identity theft from happening in this country. Seeing as 12% of Americans have been victimized, it’s not hard to see things in this light. That being said, you may find it encouraging that something new is being done. The government is working on what it calls a National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace.
The point of this policy is to help people protect their identities online by adopting online credentials, mobile identity cards or something similar that people can use to prove that they are who they say they are before they make a transaction over the Web. These personal identity cards and such are said to be part of an Identity Ecosystem.
If this policy becomes mainstream, you could see the age of usernames and passwords go away in favor of a more high tech way to automatically be identified. The point is to also make it easier to identify legitimate organizations by giving consumers an easy way to tell that the business they think they’re doing business with is who they are really submitting their information to. As of now, the policy is still in beta mode, and it is said that it will be voluntary for an indefinite period of time.
In a press release, government representatives stated that adopting this policy will make it harder for thieves to make fraudulent online transactions, allow for more efficiency, since they can use the same passwords for each online account or have fewer accounts altogether, and allow consumers a choice of which type of online identity they would like to use.
With these online IDs, people can choose how much information they would like to release to complete a transaction. For example, they don’t have to give personal data that is not necessary to complete the purchase.
While this new policy could help to keep you safer over the Web, it’s no substitute for a good identity theft protection plan. This is especially true since it hasn’t really been tested yet and, according to current message board postings, feedback is not overwhelmingly positive on this plan. There’s still a very good chance that it won’t be widely adopted, and you don’t want to risk doing business with a merchant that doesn’t participate and will not accept your high tech ID. It’s best to stick to the tried and true until more information is available.