For some time I’ve ranted that “Identity Theft” is not theft at all … it is fraud.

I believe that financial institutions and credit bureaus love the term “identity theft” because it seems to make the victim responsible.

But identity thieves didn’t steal your identity. Rather they committed what a new working paper from Harvard Business School — An Empirical Approach to Understanding Privacy Valuation — calls “impersonation fraud”.

The paper refers to a great article — Mitigating Identity Theft by Bruce Scheiner — that goes into this in more detail.

It is not identity theft. And, as Schiener points out, we should not expect individuals to solve the problem.

The very term “identity theft” is an oxymoron. Identity is not a possession that can be acquired or lost; it’s not a thing at all. Someone’s identity is the one thing about a person that cannot be stolen.

The real crime here is fraud; more specifically, impersonation leading to fraud. Impersonation is an ancient crime, but the rise of information-based credentials gives it a modern spin.

Scheiner has a monthly newsletter, Crypto-Gram and a great blog as well.