WSJ: 39 million quit online shopping--identity theft concerns

[grobe]

I recently ran across the following quote in another forum:
According to an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, fear of identity theft has caused large numbers of people to stop buying online.

"The study, conducted by Financial Insights of Framingham, Massachusetts, said that about 18% have stopped shopping online due to concerns that their personal information will be stolen. This means that about 39 million have ceased online shopping."

Has anyone seen the original article or the original research and can give more information?

This sound extremely serious for all of us who sell online.

[Wlauzon]

Sounds like bad info and research to me. I think the generic term is "BS".

Or maybe the poster read things into the report that are not there...

I see no mention of that at their site,but the full report is subscription.

[incrediBILL]

It's garbage - and hype even if it was published

Most of the online frauds I've seen on my web site originated with OFFLINE ID theft, not online.

Things like waiters writing down card #s, secondary swipers on cash registers, etc.

[Essex_boy]

39 million have ceased online shopping - Ithought my sales were down this month....

Much of this statement is hype, the vast majority of ID theft takes place offline

[grandpa]

large numbers of people to stop buying online

Not over here!

If people could have their personal information removed from the large clearinghouse repositories, identity theft would be greatly reduced. ID theft from on-line transactions is actually pretty rare. Those are my un-scientific and un-documented opinions only.

I call this one Bogus.

[1milehgh80210]

"If people could have their personal information removed from the large clearinghouse repositories, identity theft would be greatly reduced"

Exactly! I heard on the news that only one state currently requires that a person be notified if their info. is stolen from one of these '&*%$#@'.

[CernyM]

The easiest, most effective, solution to the problem would be to make it easy to put a credit freeze on your own account.

Contrary to popular belief, identity thieves generally do not go after your existing accounts. Its easier and faster to open instant credit and purchase items that are easily resold. When my identity was stolen a year ago, the thief opened accounts at the cash registers of jewelry stores and CompUSA and stole over $30,000 worth of goods in the two days it took Citibanks anti-fraud systems to catch on.

Once the credit freeze went into effect, the fraud stopped immediately. All that was left was the hassle of the paperwork required to clean up the mess.

Unfortunately, the laws that would make it easy for consumers to pre-emptively protect themselves this way are facing stiff resistance from banks and merchants.

[Wlauzon]

That reminds of some of our competitors sites that - for whatever reason - do not have online ordering.

They have a big spiel about how CC fraud, ID theft, etc etc is rampant. They then go on to say something like "we are better because you can call in your order and protect yourself" etc etc type garbage. Basically scare tactics to keep you from buying online. They obviously don't mention things like secure servers, encryption etc.

One customer I talked to got a bit flustered when I pointed out that if they were using a cordless phone, a $400 scanner could pick it up....