Except there's actually no such thing as "identity theft" - it's a mere figment of the credit industry's (tracking industry's) fantasy in which they're omniscient, and an attempt to slowly push the responsibility for bank fraud onto uninvolved third parties. In reality, some would-be bank fraudsters got ahold of some non-secret information.
I agree. Identity theft is just a particular method of fraud with a name that mitigates the responsibility of the institutions that enabled the fraudsters.
I don't know if it is one one of those terms that was invented by one of those PR agencies that invented terms like "climate change" to mitigate the visceral impact of "global warming."[1] But it certainly has ended up as a term that obfuscates the responsibility of banks to stop treating public information like passwords.
I think 'climate change' is generally used now because 'global warming' implies the entire globe will become warmer, when in fact some areas, due to complex interactions, will actually become cooler. That, combined with the political posturing (on both sides), has made it useful to use a more general term. IMHO.
