ID theft risk 'overblown': Study

Rarely do we hear good news on this subject, but people who've had their credit cards or personal info stolen are at little risk of becoming identity-theft victims, a just-released study found. Even in cases where thieves get social security numbers and other sensitive information, "only about 1 in 1,000 victims had their identities stolen," Reuters cites the researchers, ID Analytics of San Diego, as saying. The fraud detection firm analyzed "four recent data breaches involving a total of 500,000 consumers," including an unidentified "top 5 US bank." As for reasons why fears about stolen credit cards are overblown: people usually cancel them quickly, and it's "hard work" to piece an identity together just from info on a credit card. For link redundancy, here's Reuters at USATODAY too. But it's still important to protect our privacy. Here's the New York Times on "proper data destruction" on the family PC.