Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Identity Theft and Child Pornography

The CBC has a story on how “Global child porn probe led to false accusations:”

An international investigation of internet-based child pornography has led to accusations against innocent victims of credit card fraud, a CBC News investigation has found.

In other cases, victims of identity theft found themselves fighting to save their reputations, jobs and marriages after their names were used to buy child pornography.

…In another case, a doctor whose credit card was used fraudulently lost his hospital position when he was investigated on child-porn charges. The doctor was cleared at trial when his electronic diary showed he could not have accessed a child-porn site at the time indicated in the database, but he did not get his job back.

That you have nothing to hide doesn’t mean you don’t need privacy from the databases.