According to a 2005 study by Javelin Strategies and the Better Business Bureau, 48% of all identity theft victims reported that employees, friends, acquaintances, relatives, or their own carelessness was to blame rather than hackers. Less than 12% was the result of computer related crimes.

Visa USA and the US Chamber of Commerce are sponsoring a nationwide lecture series to crack down on identity theft at the point of sale. They say businesses should work to improve data security in 4 key areas.

Storage: What kind of processing software or processor does the business use? What kind of data is collected and how is it stored? If purchase information is not stored electronically, sales receipts that contain account numbers should be protected.

Laws and standards: Does the business understand both the law and payment-industry requirements for protecting cardholder information? Customers should do business only with merchants that are compliant.

Checkout: Businesses should train employees to stop skimming and to look for the important security features of credit cards.

Access: Businesses should limit employee access to cardholder information.

Visa got involved last year when a hacker got access to 40 million credit card numbers through it’s payment processing company, CardSystems Solutions.

As identity theft becomes more of a problem, it will be interesting to see how Congress will try to legislate it - particularly since just this week, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid learned he was a victim of identity theft. Someone got his credit card number and charged $2000 at Walmart and other stores in North Carolina.