identity theft

Indentity theft is the new buzz word in America. I called just a bit ago and validated one of my credit cards. I have had the thing forever but have had no need for it until today. Anyways,
the process was a real pain in the butt. They spent about 10 minutes forcing me to listen to recordings about their version of indentity theft protection. While I was holding the phone out until the recordings were over I had a thought. Perhaps it is the credit card companies that started this whole trend in the first place. Perhaps they were not making enough money off of interest rates so they decided to 'create' a new problem so that they could sell the solution 'protection'!
Doesn't this go along with the whole theory that dear ol' pres knew that pearl harbor was going to be bombed but he needed a way to get us into the war? Similar thought anyways? I dunno maybe not.

I read an article in readers digest once about this issue. The guy who wrote it put his social security # in the article for the whole word to see. His point was that it is not all a secret anyways. It is way too easy to find info about us normal people in this world and so we can live a life of fear or accept the fact that for 20 bucks we can learn anything we want about a person.