LifeLock Blog

According to a blog post on the White House website by cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt, the government is working on a plan to create a single online identity to help authenticate users , called The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace. The idea is that it will help protect peoples identities online and help people do everything form sending emails to making banking transactions and even accessing medical records.

The Department of Homeland security has posted a draft of the plan online and is asking for suggestions and comments from the American public through July 19th. The plan is both broad and vague, mostly likely because it will take a lot of input and co-operation from cooperations both in the public and private sector to make it work.

I think having one identity for online use would be really nice, but there are several problems that need to be addressed. First of all if you loose your login credentials you would be locked out of everything, until you got it fixed. Also if your account was ever breached they would have access to all your accounts and not just one of them. Assuming you use different login credentials for different sites a hacker or thief would have to steal all of them to gain access to all your accounts, which would take a lot longer. The security on this single identity account would have to be really strong to prevent people from stealing the credentials and having a free pass to all of someones online accounts.

I am also a little hesitant to see the government control something like this. They would undoubtable track your movements and logins to know what you were up to. If everything on the web required this new account login then the government would pretty much control the internet if they wanted to. They could simply block your account keeping you from logging into anything. The internet and it’s power houses would never allow this, however if the government made it a requirement then people wouldn’t have a choice.

There are already non-government programs like this out there, like Open ID. Their objective is to simply make a global login that can be used for any website that accepts it. They are not designed to be a trust building, security info-structure, but the basic idea is there.

I like this idea as long as it’s a supplemental, and above all optional, security choice. If you used the trusted identity as a second layer of protection to gain access to your online accounts then I would be for it. Identity theft on the web is a big problem, but lets just hope the government doesn’t go crazy and start forcing something like this on the public.

The government has started a new program called CARS, which stands for Car Allowance Rebate System. The program is designed to get gas guzzler cars off the road. Your car must be 25 years old or younger and it must get less than 18 miles a gallon when it was new, and the car must now be in drivable condition. If your car qualifies you can get between $3,500 and $4,500 for your trade in.

Whenever there are government programs there are always scams that will supposedly help you obtain the rebate or credit from the government. This new CARS program is no exception. Police have already identified people running scams telling people they can provide a voucher or will add their name to an application list if they pay a fee and provide certain information. The scam artists will then take your money and use your private information to steal your identity.

The truth is there are no vouchers or application lists. The only people that can apply for the credit are new car dealerships. They are the ones that apply and they are the ones that get the money. The discounts can only be applied to new cars and the dealerships are the only ones that see the money.

So don’t fall for scams with catchy names that offer CARS credit vouchers or applications. Avoid anyone that offers money orders, check or direct deposit of your rebate, because the dealership is the only one that sees the money. If you look for these signs you should be able to identity the ID theft scams and be able to avoid them. Only trust an authorized dealer to handle the application process and be careful to whom you give your information.