Ever since the Liberty Alliance Project established ID-Theft SIG, an identity theft special interest group, in April 2005, it has been at work on a lexicon of terms designed to define exactly what identity theft is and is not, reports China Martens for IDG News Service. The hope is that the lexicon might enable regulators to better understand the issue of identity theft and therefore be better able to regulate against it.

According to Michael Barrett, vice president of the Liberty Alliance Project, the expression "identity theft" has become too much of a blanket term. He noted that it is often used in relation to the theft of a consumer's credit card number as well as the potentially much more serious theft of an individual's full credit data. "There seems to be a lot of difficulty in understanding ID theft. There's no common set of terms that everyone agrees to," Barrett explained.

With an agreed upon lexicon, Barrett believes regulators will have an instrument in place that will bring universal understanding of what constitutes identity theft, and therefore, have a more efficient way of establishing regulations and enforcing it.

The Liberty Alliance Project also is considering creating generic educational material on identity theft that its members can customize and brand for distribution to their enterprise customers and consumers.

Work on the identity theft lexicon has proceeded without contributions from Microsoft, which has not been a hindrance to the project at this point, Barrett adds. Should the need for some new technology become apparent in the battle against identity theft, Microsoft's assistance would be helpful, he notes.

The Liberty Alliance Project was established in September 2001 by Sun to create open technical standards for digital identity. About a third of the Liberty Alliance Project's 150 members are involved in ID-Theft SIG, which was recently renamed the Identity Theft Protection Group. Barrett is the co-chair of the renamed group along with Alex Popowycz, who is a member of the Liberty Alliance management board and vice president for Fidelity Investments. [...read more...]

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