Prometheus 6

Todd Davis is the CEO of LifeLock, a company that offers a mostly useless $10 per month identity theft protection service. In an effort to eat his own dogfood, and promote his company's service, Mr. Davis includes his social security number in all of the company's advertisements--see here. A full page ad in this week's USA Today had his SSN listed in big letters.

Making a mockery of LifeLock's identity theft protections, a Texas man in 2006 was able to secure a $500 payday loan with Mr. Davis' social security number....

Thus, I now introduce Soghoian's Law of Identity Theft Stupidity: Anyone who publishes their own private financial details in a public discussion of identity theft will eventually find that information used for fraud.

Twice bitten: Acts of stupidity can lead to identity theft
Posted by Chris Soghoian

A British TV presenter has learned the hard way that identity theft is serious, and in the process, become the joke of the moment for privacy bloggers. More importantly, this is the second time in just one year that such a thing has happened. This blog post explores the latest incident, looks back to the past, and then concludes with a more broad analysis.